Transaction facilitating marketplace platform

ABSTRACT

A platform facilitates buyers, sellers, and third parties in obtaining information related to each other&#39;s transaction histories, such as a supplier&#39;s shipment history, the types of materials typically shipped, a supplier&#39;s customers, a supplier&#39;s expertise, what materials and how much a buyer purchases, buyer and shipper reliability, similarity between buyers, similarity between suppliers, and the like. The platform aggregates data from a variety of sources, including, without limitation, customs data associated with actual import/export transactions, non-public shipper records, and facilitates the generation of reports as to the quality of buyers and suppliers, the reports relating to a variety of parameters that are associated with buyer and supplier quality.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 15/861,850 filedJan. 4, 2018, which is a continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 14/488,401 filedSep. 17, 2014 (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,898,767 issued Feb. 20, 2018) whichclaims the benefit of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 61/878,674filed Sep. 17, 2013, each of which is hereby incorporated by referencein its entirety.

U.S. Ser. No. 14/488,401 is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Ser. No.14/205,058 filed Mar. 11, 2014 which claims the benefit of U.S.provisional application Ser. No. 61/780,021 filed Mar. 13, 2013, each ofwhich is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

U.S. Ser. No. 14/205,058 is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Ser. No.14/096,662 filed Dec. 4, 2013, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S.non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 13/343,354 filed Jan. 4,2012 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,626,618 issued Jan. 7, 2014) which claims thebenefit of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 61/430,077 filed Jan.5, 2011, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in itsentirety.

U.S. Ser. No. 13/343,354 is a continuation-in-part of U.S.non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 13/004,368 filed Jan. 11,2011 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,423,425 issued Apr. 16, 2013) which claims thebenefit of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 61/293,931 filed Jan.11, 2010, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in itsentirety.

U.S. Ser. No. 13/004,368 is a continuation-in-part of U.S.non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 12/271,593 filed Nov. 14,2008 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,473,354 issued Jun. 25, 2013) which claims thebenefit of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60/987,989 filed Nov.14, 2007, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in itsentirety.

BACKGROUND Field

The present invention is related to electronic commerce, and moreparticularly to rating systems.

Description of the Related Art

Buyers who are interested in working with suppliers, particularlyoverseas suppliers, may have many suppliers from which they can choose.For instance, in the apparel industry there are an estimated 40,000apparel factories in China alone, with some 80,000 worldwide. In orderto select a supplier, a buyer traditionally has had to rely on directexperience with the supplier or work through a middleman thatfacilitates contracting with suppliers. However, working with amiddle-man may incur commissions for their services, and workingdirectly with the supplier may present the buyer with a large degree ofuncertainty, such as relating to the quality and reliability of thesupplier, who the supplier typically works with, what type of productsthe supplier typically supplies, materials used, customers served, andthe like. Some information about suppliers can be obtained from othersources, such as trade fairs, online directories, referrals, and thelike. These disparate sources of information are, however, difficult tosort through, and at present there is a distinct lack of reliable andobjective information that buyers can use to assess suppliers around theworld. As a result, buyers must proceed largely on their own, and atconsiderable risk and expense.

A need exists for ways for buyers to more easily select suppliers.

SUMMARY

Methods and systems are disclosed herein for a platform by which buyers,sellers, and third parties can obtain information related to eachother's transaction histories, such as a supplier's shipment history,the types of materials typically shipped, a supplier's customers, asupplier's expertise, what materials and how much a buyer purchases,buyer and shipper reliability, similarity between buyers, similaritybetween suppliers, and the like. The platform may aggregate data from avariety of sources, including, without limitation, customs dataassociated with actual import/export transactions, and facilitates thegeneration of reports as to the quality of buyers and suppliers, thereports relating to a variety of parameters that are associated withquality buyers and suppliers, and the like.

In an aspect of the invention, methods and systems may include: using acomputer implemented facility to collect and store a plurality ofrecords of transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and rating an entity based on analysis of the aggregatedtransactions. In the aspect a rating is tailored based on criteriadefined by an end user.

In the aspect a rating is for one or more of: suppliers using aggregatedtransactional customs data, a supplier based on customs data related totransactions by the supplier with a third party, a buyer usingaggregated transactional customs data, a buyer based on customs datarelated to transactions of the buyer with a third party, a supplierbased on loyalty as indicated by analysis of customs transactions, asupplier based on amount of experience as indicated by customstransactions, a supplier based on evaluating the number of shipments, asupplier based on duration of experience as indicated by shipments, asupplier based on size of transactions as indicated by past shipments, asupplier based on extent of international experience as indicated bypast shipments, a supplier based on extent of country-relevantexperience as indicated by past shipments, a buyer based on loyalty asindicated by analysis of customs transactions, a buyer based on amountof experience as indicated by customs transactions, a buyer based onevaluating the number of shipments, a buyer based on duration ofexperience as indicated by shipments, a buyer based on size oftransactions as indicated by past shipments, a buyer based on extent ofinternational experience as indicated by past shipments, a buyer basedon extent of country-relevant experience as indicated by past shipments,a supplier based on customer loyalty and supplier experience asindicated by past shipments reflected in customs records.

In the aspect, the rating is further based on at least two factorsselected from the group consisting of: a country context of a party, abusiness legitimacy of a party, whether a party is registered withgovernment authorities, an assessment of a trading environment in acountry, macroeconomic information, public recognition of a party,industry awards, industry certifications, amount of experience, numberof shipments, duration of experience, size of transactions, extent ofdomestic experience, extent of international experience, caliber ofcustomers, customer loyalty, degree of specialization, specialization inproduct categories, specialization in manufacturing techniques,specialization in materials, specialization in gender, feedback fromcustomers, feedback from buyers, feedback on product quality, feedbackon customer service, feedback on timeliness of delivery, feedback onlanguage skills, feedback on sample making ability, respect forintellectual property, quality management, social responsibility,environmental responsibility, standards of compliance, certifications,and certifications with respect to specific vendor standards.

In the aspect, the rating is based on one of: a country context of aparty, a business legitimacy of a party, whether a party is registeredwith government authorities, an assessment of a trading environment in acountry, macroeconomic information, public recognition of a party,industry awards, industry certifications, amount of experience, numberof shipments, duration of experience, size of transactions, extent ofdomestic experience, extent of international experience, caliber ofcustomers, customer loyalty, degree of specialization, specialization inproduct categories, specialization in manufacturing techniques,specialization in materials, specialization in gender, feedback fromcustomers, feedback from buyers, feedback on product quality, feedbackon customer service, feedback on timeliness of delivery, feedback onlanguage skills, feedback on sample making ability, respect forintellectual property, quality management, social responsibility,environmental responsibility, standards of compliance, certifications,and certifications with respect to specific vendor standards

In the aspect, weights are given in the rating process. The weights arebased on timeliness of data. The weights are given based on size oftransaction. The weights for transactions are given based on the qualityof the transacting parties; the quality of a transacting party is basedon a prior rating for that party. The weights are based on relevance ofdata.

In the aspect the rating is for a plurality of factories of an entity.

In the aspect the rating includes providing a human-aided assessment ofsupplier skills as a factor in a rating. Alternatively the ratingincludes using an indicator of an entity's financial health as a factorin a rating.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and providing an entity score for an entity based onanalysis of the aggregated transactions. In the aspect the entity scoreis based at least in part on transactional data about shipments by theentity. In the aspect the entity score includes factors selected fromthe group consisting of country context, business legitimacyinformation, public recognition, amount of experience, caliber ofcustomers of the supplier, customer loyalty for the supplier, degree ofspecialization of the supplier, and feedback from previous customers. Inthe aspect the entity score for the suppliers is based on aggregatedtransactional customs data. In the aspect the entity score is based on acriteria defined by an end user. In the aspect the entity score for asupplier is based on customs data related to transactions by thesupplier with a third party. In the aspect the entity score is based onat least two factors selected from the group consisting of: a countrycontext of a party, a business legitimacy of a party, whether a party isregistered with government authorities, an assessment of a tradingenvironment in a country, macroeconomic information, public recognitionof a party, industry awards, industry certifications, amount ofexperience, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of domestic experience, extent of internationalexperience, caliber of customers, customer loyalty, degree ofspecialization, specialization in product categories, specialization inmanufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specialization ingender, feedback from customers, feedback from buyers, feedback onproduct quality, feedback on customer service, feedback on timeliness ofdelivery, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, standards of compliance,certifications, and certifications with respect to specific vendorstandards. In the aspect the entity score is based upon one of: acountry context of a party, a business legitimacy of a party, whether aparty is registered with government authorities, an assessment of atrading environment in a country, macroeconomic information, publicrecognition of a party, industry awards, industry certifications, amountof experience, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of domestic experience, extent of internationalexperience, caliber of customers, customer loyalty, degree ofspecialization, specialization in product categories, specialization inmanufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specialization ingender, feedback from customers, feedback from buyers, feedback onproduct quality, feedback on customer service, feedback on timeliness ofdelivery, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, standards of compliance,certifications, and certifications with respect to specific vendorstandards.

In the aspect, the entity score for a supplier is based on one or moreof: loyalty as indicated by analysis of customs transactions, an amountof experience as indicated by customs transactions, evaluating thenumber of shipments, a duration of experience as indicated by shipments,size of transactions as indicated by past shipments, extent ofinternational experience as indicated by past shipments, on extent ofcountry-relevant experience as indicated by past shipments, and customerloyalty and supplier experience as indicated by past shipments reflectedin customs records. In the aspect the entity score for a buyer is basedon one or more of: loyalty as indicated by analysis of customstransactions, an amount of experience as indicated by customstransactions, evaluating the number of shipments, a duration ofexperience as indicated by shipments, a size of transactions asindicated by past shipments, an extent of international experience asindicated by past shipments, aggregated transactional customs data,customs data related to transactions of the buyer with a third party,and an extent of country-relevant experience as indicated by pastshipments. In the aspect the entity score is for a plurality offactories of an entity. In the aspect, methods and systems furtherinclude providing a human-aided assessment of supplier skills as afactor in a entity score or include using an indicator of an entity'sfinancial health as a factor in a entity score.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and determining a risk profile based on analysis of theaggregated transactions. In the aspect the risk profile is provided withrespect to a supplier based on transactional customs data for thesupplier. In the aspect, the risk is related to at least one of:counterfeiting, capacity, subcontracting, a political factor, ageographic factor, a weather factor, a geology factor, a financial risk,a probability of non-performance of a contract, a probability oftermination of a contract, intellectual property, achieving a targeteddelivery date. In the aspect the risk profile is provided with respectto a supplier based on transactional customs data for a party other thanthe supplier. In this aspect, the risk is related to at least one of:counterfeiting, capacity, subcontracting, a political factor, ageographic factor, a weather factor, a geology factor, a financial risk,a probability of non-performance of a contract, a probability oftermination of a contract, intellectual property, achieving a targeteddelivery date.

In the aspect, the risk profile is provided with respect to a buyerbased on transactional customs data for the buyer. The risk is relatedto non-payment or the likelihood that a buyer will move to analternative supplier.

In the aspect, the risk profile is provided with respect to a buyerbased on transactional customs data for a party other than the buyer.The risk is related to non-payment or the likelihood that a buyer willmove to an alternative supplier.

In the aspect, the risk profile is provided for a party using customsdata and using the risk profile as a basis for determining terms andconditions of insurance.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and providing an indicator of economic leverage withrespect to an entity based on analysis of the aggregated transactions.In the aspect, the indicator of economic leverage is with respect to atleast one of: a supplier based on transactional customs data for thesupplier, a supplier based on transactional customs data for a partyother than the supplier, a buyer based on transactional customs data forthe buyer, a buyer based on transactional customs data for a party otherthan the buyer. In the aspect, the transactional customs datacorresponds to a price. Alternatively in the aspect, the transactionalcustoms data corresponds to a delivery date or an order quantity.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and predicting an action of an entity based on analysisof the aggregated transactions. In the aspect the prediction is of anaction of a buyer based on analysis of customs data for transactions bythe buyer. In the aspect the prediction is related to at least one of:price, a change in price, a change in supplier, and a quantity orderedby the buyer. In the aspect the prediction is of an action of a buyerbased on analysis of customs data for transactions by a party other thanthe buyer. The prediction is related to a price, a change in price, achange in supplier, or a quantity ordered by a buyer. In the aspect, theprediction is of an action of a supplier based on analysis of customsdata for transactions by the buyer. The prediction is related to aprice, a change in price, a change in availability of an item, whether asupplier will work with a buyer of a given size, or whether a supplierwill work with orders of a given size. In the aspect the prediction isof an action of a supplier based on analysis of customs data fortransactions by a party other than the buyer. The prediction is relatedto a price, a change in price, a change in availability of an item, apotential closure of a subsidiary, a potential closure of a factory, ora potential closure of a company.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and making a recommendation based on analysis of theaggregated transactions. In the aspect the recommendation is based onanalysis of customs data for transactions by the buyer, analysis ofcustoms data for transactions by a party other than the buyer, analysisof customs data for transactions by the buyer, analysis of customs datafor transactions by a party other than the buyer, prioritization offactors by a user, or a user-specified rating factor.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and associating an entity type with at least one of theentities. In the aspect, a data merging facility automatically mergesrecords based on similarity of data elements with a customs record. Thedata elements correspond to a name of the entity or an address of theentity. Alternatively in the aspect, a data merging facility suggests anassociation between records and a single entity. The entity type isderived from one or more commodity fields in the transactions, and atleast one of the commodity fields includes a harmonic tariff systemcode, a commodity type, or both. In the aspect, associating an entitytype is based on an analysis of free text data in a plurality of datafields of the transactions. Associating an entity may alternatively bebased on machine learning of entity types from customs transactionaldata records. The transactions may be customs transactions.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; and processing the data toassociate a plurality of transactions associated with a plurality ofdifferent entity names to a single entity based on analysis of customsrecord data for the transactions associated with the plurality ofdifferent entity names. In the aspect, the processing is based on, aname of the supplier, a name of the buyer, an order quantity, a billingamount, a location of the buyer, a location of the supplier, a deliverydate, order data, at least one string associated with a supplier name,or at least one string associated with a buyer name. In the aspect theprocessing involves removing blank spaces from a supplier name field orremoving blank spaces from a buyer name field. In the aspect, thetransaction is associated with a region of interest, an industry, pastshipment data, a country-relevant experience, a number of shipments, amaterial, a product category, a technique, a name of the entity, anorder quantity, a billing address, a targeted delivery date, or acapacity of the supplier.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and evaluating legitimacy of feedback about an entitybased on analysis of whether the feedback is associated with atransaction reflected in public records. The evaluation of legitimacy offeedback associated with the supplier is based on validation by a thirdparty. The evaluation of legitimacy of feedback associated with thebuyer is based on validation by a third party.

In the aspect the transaction is associated with a name of the entity,an order quantity, a billing address, a targeted delivery date, acapacity of the supplier, transaction customs data, a region ofinterest, an industry, a past shipment, a country-relevant experience, anumber of shipments, a material, a product category, or a technique.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and providing a computer-implemented tool for suggestinga marketing strategy for a supplier based on analysis of transactionaldata from the public records. In the aspect the transactional data isassociated with a supplier, a buyer, region of interest, customs data,past shipment, country relevant experience, a number of shipments, aproduct category, a material, or a technique. The analysis oftransactional data includes analysis of pricing, buyer behavior, ortransactional data associated with a competitor of the supplier.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and providing a computer-implemented tool for suggesting amarketing strategy for a buyer based on analysis of the transactionaldata from the records. In the aspect, the transactional data isassociated with a supplier, a buyer, a region of interest, customs data,a past shipment, a country relevant experience, a number of shipments, aproduct category, a material, or a technique. The analysis oftransactional data includes analysis of pricing, buyer behavior, oranalysis of transactional data associated with a competitor of thebuyer.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and providing a user interface whereby a user may searchfor at least one of a supplier and a buyer and retrieve relevantinformation based on the aggregated transactions data. In the aspect,the interface allows a tuple-based search. The tuple-based searchrelates to a capability with respect to at least one of a product, amaterial and a technique. In the aspect, search results are ranked basedon a supplier rating.

In the aspect, the rating is based upon a country context of a party,business legitimacy of a party, whether a party is registered withgovernment authorities, an assessment of a trading environment in acountry, macroeconomic information, public recognition of a party,industry awards, industry certifications, amount of experience, numberof shipments, duration of experience, size of transactions, extent ofdomestic experience, extent of international experience, caliber ofcustomers, customer loyalty, degree of specialization, specialization inproduct categories, specialization in manufacturing techniques,specialization in materials, specialization in gender, feedback fromcustomers, feedback from buyers, feedback on product quality, feedbackon customer service, feedback on timeliness of delivery, feedback onlanguage skills, feedback on sample making ability, respect forintellectual property, quality management, social responsibility,environmental responsibility, standards of compliance, certifications,or certifications with respect to specific vendor standards.

In the aspect, the search results are based on a risk profile.

In the aspect, the risk is related to counterfeiting, capacity,subcontracting, a political factor, a geographic factor, a weatherfactor, a geology factor, a financial risk, a probability ofnon-performance of a contract, a probability of termination of acontract, intellectual property, achieving a targeted delivery date.

In the aspect, the risk profile is provided with respect to a supplierbased on transactional customs data for a party other than the supplier.The risk is related to counterfeiting, capacity, subcontracting, apolitical factor, a geographic factor, a weather factor, a geologyfactor, a financial risk, a probability of non-performance of acontract, a probability of termination of a contract, intellectualproperty, achieving a targeted delivery date, a buyer based ontransactional customs data for the buyer, non-payment, or the likelihoodthat a buyer will move to an alternative supplier. In the aspect, therisk profile is provided with respect to a buyer based on transactionalcustoms data for a party other than the buyer. The risk is related tonon-payment or the likelihood that a buyer will move to an alternativesupplier.

In the aspect, the risk profile is provided for a party using customsdata and using the risk profile as a basis for determining terms andconditions of insurance. The results are based on an opportunityprofile. The opportunity relates to the availability of pricing leveragefor a buyer with respect to a supplier, consolidation of orders with asupplier. The opportunity relates to the availability of pricingleverage for a supplier with respect to a buyer or to increasing a shareof a buyer's total spending for a supplier.

In another aspect of the invention, the methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; integrating the aggregated and associated transactionswith data from at least one other data source to provide an integrateddata facility; and adapting the integrated data facility for evaluatingat least one of a supplier and a buyer. In the aspect, the publicrecords include customs records. In the aspect, evaluations are rankedbased on a supplier rating. In the aspect, the evaluation is based upona country context of a party, business legitimacy of a party, whether aparty is registered with government authorities, an assessment of atrading environment in a country, macroeconomic information, publicrecognition of a party, industry awards, industry certifications, amountof experience, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of domestic experience, extent of internationalexperience, caliber of customers, customer loyalty, degree ofspecialization, specialization in product categories, specialization inmanufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specialization ingender, feedback from customers, feedback from buyers, feedback onproduct quality, feedback on customer service, feedback on timeliness ofdelivery, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, standards of compliance,certifications, or certifications with respect to specific vendorstandards.

In the aspect, evaluations are ranked based on a buyer rating, a countrycontext of a party, business legitimacy of a party, whether a party isregistered with government authorities, an assessment of a tradingenvironment in a country, macroeconomic information, public recognitionof a party, industry awards, industry certifications, amount ofexperience, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of domestic experience, extent of internationalexperience, caliber of customers, customer loyalty, degree ofspecialization, specialization in product categories, specialization inmanufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specialization ingender, feedback from customers, feedback from buyers, feedback onproduct quality, feedback on customer service, feedback on timeliness ofdelivery, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, standards of compliance,certifications, or certifications with respect to specific vendorstandards.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records ofcustoms transactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; aggregating the transactions; associating the transactionswith entities; and suggesting an opportunity based on analysis of thetransactions. In the aspect, the opportunity relates to the availabilityof pricing leverage for a buyer with respect to a supplier, anopportunity for consolidation of orders with a supplier, theavailability of pricing leverage for a supplier with respect to a buyer,the opportunity to increase a share of a buyer's total spending for asupplier, the availability of a discount for the buyer with respect tothe supplier for a specified period, the availability of a committedtime for delivery by the buyer to the supplier, the availability of bulkdiscount for the buyer with respect to the supplier, the availability ofcredit sales for the buyer with respect to the supplier, theavailability of free delivery for the buyer with respect to thesupplier, or the availability of liquidated damages for the buyer withrespect to the supplier.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of aggregatedcustoms transactions; associating the transactions with a supplier; andusing the aggregated transactions to inform a rating of the supplierbased at least in part on analysis of the aggregated transactions. Inthe aspect, the aggregated customs transactions include a summary oftransactions for a product type. The transactions are summarized over aperiod of time. The analysis of the aggregated transactions includescomparing the aggregated transactions for a supplier with a plurality ofrecords of transactions for a buyer. The aggregated customs transactionsinclude transactions for a plurality of suppliers. In the aspect,associating the transactions with a supplier includes predicting one ormore suppliers to which the transactions can be associated.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: taking a plurality ofinput data records from at least one data source of transactions;matching the data records to an entity that is a party to a plurality oftransactions; and automatically merging the data records associated withthe same entity to form a merged data store of transactions. In theaspect, matching includes filtering the data records. Filtering suggestsdata records for merging. Filtering is based on search enginetechniques, such as a lucene search engine technique. Filtering is basedon kgram filtering that may include a kgram filtering group thatconsists of four consecutive characters. In the aspect, a kgramfiltering threshold for suggesting data records to be merged is tenmatching kgram filter groups. In the aspect, a plurality of data fieldswithin a data record are combined for matching.

In the aspect, matching includes classification. Classification isperformed on data records suggested for merging and optionally,filtering is used to suggest data records for merging. Classificationincludes at least one of canonical adaptation, text cleanup, multi-fieldclassification, edit distance assessment, vector generation, machinelearning, and decision tree processing. Canonical adaptation includesnormalizing text strings among the plurality of transactions or changingequivalent text strings to a known text string. Text cleanup is based onat least one of geographic factors, regional factors, market verticals,industry norms, known variations, learned variations, and userpreferences.

In the aspect, the text cleanups are associated with at least one typeof data field in the data records. The type of data field includes atleast one of a shipper, a consignee, a notify party, an also notifyparty, a weight, a quantity, a country, a date, a commodity, and aharmonic tariff system code. Classification is applied to a plurality ofdata fields in the data records or to combined data fields in the datarecords.

In the aspect, classification provides a vector that representsdimensions of similarity. The vector includes dimensions of similarityfor at least two of canonical adaptation, text cleanup, multi-fieldclassification, edit distance assessment, vector generation, machinelearning, and decision tree processing.

In the aspect, matching includes clustering. Optionally, clusteringincludes p-percent clustering. In the aspect, a data record is mergedwhen a p-percent value associated with the data record exceeds ap-percent threshold associated with the entity. Optionally the p-percentthreshold is thirty percent. Alternatively p-percent clustering is basedon a dynamic p-percent threshold. The dynamic p-percent threshold isbased on a quantity of data records in a cluster associated with anentity.

In the aspect, the plurality of transactions contains party identifyingdata in a field of the data records. The party identifying data isstored in different fields of at least two of the plurality of datarecords. Optionally, party identifying data in a first record is aparent entity and a party identifying data in a second record is a childentity of the parent entity.

In the aspect, matching data records includes identifying data that is avariation of an entity name or an entity address. In the aspect, theparty is one of a supplier and a buyer. Alternatively, matching includestwo or more types of text association selected from a list consistingof: filtering, character group matching, thesaurus lookup, machinelearning, natural language processing, search-based comparison,classification, known entity matching, clustering, and human-identifiedentities.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: taking a plurality ofinput data records from at least one data source of transactions;filtering the input data records to identify a set of filtered datarecords that are favorable candidates for automatic merging; classifyingthe filtered data records to produce a set of classified data records,each classified data record associated with a likelihood that the datarecord should be associated with a particular entity; and automaticallymerging the data records associated with the same entity to form amerged data store of transactions. In the aspect, the filtering isperformed using a search engine, kgram filtering, or dynamicprogramming. I the aspect, classifying the data records is performedusing at least one of canonical adaptation, specific cleanups,multi-field comparison, an edit distance algorithm, vector generation,machine learning, and a decision tree. In the aspect, filtering suggestsdata records for merging. Alternatively filtering is based on searchengine techniques, that optionally include a lucene search enginetechnique. In the aspect filtering is based on kgram filtering.Optionally a kgram filtering group consists of four consecutivecharacters. Optionally a kgram filtering threshold for suggesting datarecords to be merged is ten matching kgram filter groups. In the aspect,a plurality of data fields within a data record is combined formatching.

In the aspect, classification is performed on data records suggested formerging. Optionally filtering is used to suggest data records formerging. In the aspect classification includes at least one of canonicaladaptation, text cleanup, multi-field classification, edit distanceassessment, vector generation, machine learning, and decision treeprocessing. Canonical adaptation includes normalizing text strings amongthe transactions or changing equivalent text strings to a known textstring.

In the aspect, text cleanup may be based on at least one of geographicfactors, regional factors, market verticals, industry norms, knownvariations, learned variations, and user preferences. Optionally, textcleanups are associated with at least one type of data field in the datarecords. The type of data field includes a shipper, a consignee, anotify party, an also notify party, a weight, a quantity, a country, adate, a commodity, and a harmonic tariff system code.

In the aspect, classification is applied to a plurality of data fieldsin the data records or to combined data fields in the data records.

In the aspect, classification provides a vector that representsdimensions of similarity. Optionally, the vector includes dimensions ofsimilarity for at least two of canonical adaptation, text cleanup,multi-field classification, edit distance assessment, vector generation,machine learning, and decision tree processing.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and classifying an entity as a buyer based on analysis of theaggregated transactions. In the aspect the aggregated transaction isassociated with an industry, customs data, a past shipment, a likelihoodof interest, or a number of shipments.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and using the transactions as a training set to predictassociation of a particular transaction with an attribute. In theaspect, the attribute is a type of industry, a type of supplier, a typeof product, a product attribute, or related to a type of material. Inthe aspect, the particular transaction represents a shipment from asupplier to a buyer. The transactions are customs transactions.Alternatively, the entities are one or more of a supplier and a buyer.Optionally, the particular transaction is a rolled-up transaction.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and using the transactions as a training set to predictassociation of a particular transaction with an entity. In the aspect,the particular transaction represents a shipment from a supplier to abuyer. Alternatively, the transactions are customs transactions. In theaspect, an entity is one of a supplier and a buyer. Optionally, theparticular transaction is a rolled-up transaction.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and predicting a minimum order requirement for an entity basedon analysis of the transactions. In the aspect the entity is a factory,supplier, or a subsidiary of a supplier.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and providing a search facility for enabling a search for anentity, wherein the search facility allows searching based on geographicregion, industry specialization, entities participating in thetransactions, and likelihood of interest in a transaction with thesearcher. In the aspect, the search facility is adapted to be used by abuyer searching for a supplier or adapted to be used by a suppliersearching for a buyer.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers and a plurality of suppliers;aggregating the transactions; associating the transactions withentities; and rating a sub-entity of a supplier based on analysis of theaggregated transactions. In the aspect, the sub-entity is a factory, acollection of factories, or a subsidiary. In the aspect, determining thesub-entity is based on analysis of the public records. Optionally, thepublic records are records of customs transactions.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of aggregatedpublic records of shipment transactions; associating the transactionswith a supplier; and using the aggregated transactions to inform arating of the supplier based at least in part on analysis of theaggregated transactions.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions; associating the transactions with entities; and usingthe aggregated transactions to classify at least one of a supplier and abuyer according to type. In the aspect a buyer may identify like buyers,suppliers like those of the buyer, suppliers of a specified type, orsuppliers like to prefer the buyer. In the aspect, a supplier mayidentify like suppliers, buyers like those of the supplier, or buyers ofa specific type.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions; associating the transactions with entities; andassessing whether a buyer has ceased doing business with a supplierbased on the transactional data. In the aspect, the assessment is basedon cycle time between shipments, departure of cycle time from ahistorical average, or based in part on a prediction as to inventoryheld by a buyer.

In another aspect of the invention, methods and systems, such ascomputer implemented methods and systems, include: using a computerimplemented facility to collect and store a plurality of public recordsof transactions; associating the transactions with entities; and usingthe aggregated transactions identify at least one of a supplier of aspecific item sold by a party other than the supplier. In the aspect,the specific item is a commodity.

In the aspect, the identification of supplier is based on region ofinterest, customs data, product category, past shipments, or a number ofshipments. The specific item is a service.

Methods and systems described herein may include a method that uses acomputer implemented facility to collect and store a plurality of publictransactional records for a plurality of buyers and a plurality ofsuppliers; a computer implemented facility to aggregate and storenon-public shipping records from at least one shipper, wherein at leastone of the shipping records references an entity identifier for at leastone of the plurality of buyers and suppliers; selects a portion of theplurality of public transactional records associated with an entityidentifier based on similarity of data in the public transactionalrecords with the at least one shipping record entity identifier; mergesthe records of the selected portion of the plurality of publictransactional records into a common entity record set; aggregates thetransactional records for the common entity record sets; and rates thecommon entity based on analysis of the aggregated transactional records.In the method, using a computer implemented facility to aggregate andstore non-public shipping records includes processing the non-publicshipping records with natural language processing to detect the entityidentifier. In the method, selecting a portion of the plurality ofpublic transactional records comprises natural language processing ofdata in the public transactional records to identify candidate recordsfor associating with the entity identifier.

Methods and systems described herein may include a method that uses acomputer implemented facility to collect and store a plurality of publictransactional records for a plurality of buyers in a plurality ofsuppliers: a computer implemented facility to aggregate and storenon-public shipping records from at least one shipper, wherein at leastone of the shipping records references an entity for at least one of theplurality of buyers and suppliers; selects a portion of the plurality ofpublic transactional records associated with an entity identifier basedon similarity of data in the public transactional records with the atleast one shipping record entity identifier; merges the records of theselected portion of the plurality of public transactional records into acommon entity record set; aggregates the transactional records for thecommon entity record sets; and rates a sub-entity of the common entitybased on analysis of the aggregated transactional records. In themethod, the sub-entity is a factory. Alternatively, in the method, thesub-entity is a collection of factories. Yet alternatively, in themethod, the sub-entity is a subsidiary. Further in the method, thesub-entity is determined based on analysis of the public transactionalrecords. Alternatively in the method, the public transactional recordsare records of customs transactions.

These and other systems, methods, objects, features, and advantages ofthe present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art fromthe following detailed description of the preferred embodiment and thedrawings. All documents mentioned herein are hereby incorporated intheir entirety by reference.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The invention and the following detailed description of certainembodiments thereof may be understood by reference to the followingfigures:

FIG. 1 depicts a report showing an overall rating derived for a set ofsuppliers in a category of products.

FIG. 2 depicts a more detailed report on a supplier with ratings along anumber of dimensions of quality and ratings generated by past buyers whohave worked with the supplier.

FIG. 3 depicts combining non-transaction data with transaction data inthe platform.

FIG. 4 depicts providing an indicator of economic leverage.

FIG. 5 depicts predicting an action based on customs transactions.

FIG. 6 depicts making a recommendation based on customs transactionanalysis.

FIG. 7 depicts a marketing tool for a supplier

FIG. 8 depicts a marketing tool for a buyer

FIG. 9 depicts a flow diagram for an overall analysis methodology forrating suppliers.

FIG. 10A depicts updating a marketplace participant profile withinformation scraped from the participant's website.

FIG. 10 depicts fields that are derived from customs data associatedwith supply transactions.

FIG. 11 depicts a plurality of customs records with details that arerelevant to buyer and supplier identification.

FIG. 12 depicts a user interface for identifying a buyer from one ormore of a plurality of customs data fields.

FIG. 13 depicts mapping variations of buyer names to a primary buyer.

FIG. 14 depicts mapping variations of buyer names to a primary seller.

FIG. 15 depicts how multiple customs transaction records can be used toassess buyer loyalty.

FIG. 16 depicts using transaction data that may be indicative of asupplier's degree of specialization.

FIG. 17 depicts customs data indicative of a supplier's degree ofexperience.

FIG. 18 depicts customs data record fields that may affect a supplier'srating based on the quality of the buyers served by the supplier.

FIG. 19 depicts a summary report showing top suppliers and an overallrating for a category of supplier of a particular product.

FIG. 20 depicts reports showing standout suppliers for a particularproduct, including suppliers with highest customer loyalty and customerswith deepest experience shipping to the buyer's jurisdiction.

FIG. 21 shows a detailed report with ratings of a supplier overall andaccording to various dimensions of quality.

FIG. 22 shows a breakdown of supplier material, product, and technicalexpertise.

FIG. 23 shows a breakdown of supplier transaction experience accordingto selected factors.

FIG. 24 shows a breakdown of shipment history broken down by piececount.

FIG. 25 shows a breakdown of shipment history by month.

FIG. 26 shows a search window for searching by country.

FIG. 27 depicts an aggregation search user interface.

FIG. 28 depicts representative graphs and trending summaries.

FIG. 29 depicts an exemplary search user interface.

FIG. 30 depicts an exemplary search delivery interface.

FIG. 31 depicts a variant of the search delivery interface of FIG. 30.

FIG. 32 depicts a supplier-focused variant of the search deliveryinterface of FIG. 30.

FIG. 33 depicts using public transactions for merging records.

FIG. 34 depicts classification of buyers from public records.

FIG. 35 depicts predicting minimum order requirements.

FIG. 36 depicts rating a sub-entity of a supplier.

FIG. 37 depicts a generalized geographic import/export presentationscreen.

FIG. 38 depicts a geographic-specific embodiment of FIG. 37

FIG. 39 depicts a user interface for updating a marketplace participantprofile.

FIG. 40 depicts a verification facility.

FIG. 41 depicts a self-disclosure integrity rating graph.

FIG. 42 depicts a flow chart for determining rewards based onself-integrity rating.

FIG. 43 depicts a diagram representing buyer and shipper proximity topotential shipping disturbances.

FIG. 44 depicts a user interface for posting a buyer inquiry.

FIG. 45 depicts a marketplace participant profile display.

FIG. 46 depicts a buyer inquiry related to a product.

FIG. 46A depicts a rating facility associated with a marketplaceplatform bid facility.

FIG. 47 depicts an example of message based communication in themarketplace system.

FIG. 48 depicts an exemplary profile of a buyer or a supplier posted onthe marketplace system.

FIG. 49 depicts enhanced information associated with the profile of FIG.48.

FIG. 50 depicts a message section interface of a marketplace system.

FIG. 51 depicts accessing a marketplace participant website through themarketplace user interface.

FIG. 52 depicts an interface for creating a new project on themarketplace system.

FIG. 53 depicts an interface for adding suppliers to a project.

FIG. 54 depicts an interface through which a marketplace participant mayselect results for a comparison of buyers and/or suppliers.

FIG. 55 depicts a marketplace interface that includes community content.

FIGS. 56A and 56B depict a maritime monitor user interface.

FIGS. 57A and 57B depict port related data for a port selected throughthe interface of FIGS. 56A and 56B.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Methods and systems are provided herein for facilitating engagement ofsuppliers; thus, a supplier rating facility may make it easier forcompanies of all sizes to do business across borders by helpingcompanies identify which suppliers they can trust. The suppler ratingfacility approach is to leverage a wide variety of quality data sourcesto rate suppliers around the globe. Behind each rating may be a detailedscorecard that evaluates suppliers along key dimensions. By comparingsupplier scorecards, subscribers may determine which suppliers are rightfor them. In one preferred embodiment the rating system is used to rateapparel suppliers, but it should be understood that suppliers in otherindustries may be rated by the same or similar methods and systems, suchas suppliers of consumer electronics, computer equipment, toys andgames, consumer products, textiles, home goods, food, accessories,computer games, automotive parts, electronic parts and equipment, and awide range of other goods and services, such as BPO, softwaredevelopment, call centers, and the like.

Presently, buyers can access a plurality of supplier directories forinformation about suppliers. However, those directories may only containinformation provided by the suppliers themselves, and on occasion,third-party information on limited subjects, such as relating tocreditworthiness. That information may not be particularly useful inhelping customers to distinguish between good and bad suppliers. Incertain preferred embodiments, the supplier rating facility disclosedherein may facilitate the generation of a plurality of reports thatsupplement or substitute for supplier-provided information, the reportsgenerated by methods and systems disclosed herein and based on a widerange of data sources. In embodiments each supplier may receive a ratingbetween 1 and 100. Behind this rating may be a detailed scorecard, eachcomponent of which being generated by an algorithm that operates on oneor more relevant data sources, and that evaluates suppliers alongdimensions that are important to customers.

A supplier rating facility as contemplated herein may provide buyerswith concrete information about which suppliers are good and whichsuppliers are bad, which are trustworthy and which are not, which areexperienced in a particular area, and the like. The ratings may featurea range of information about suppliers, including analysis generated byalgorithms operating on relevant data sources and, in certain optionalembodiments, ratings from previous customers. Analysis may include,among other things, using publicly available but currently fragmentedinformation. In various embodiments, the supplier rating facility mayrate suppliers along several dimensions, including without limitationamount of international experience, degree of specialization, andstandards compliance.

In certain optional embodiments, ratings from previous customers mayenable suppliers to gather and showcase feedback from their previouscustomers. Buyers may pay a subscription fee for access to ratingsdetail. Existing business-to-business sites may be able to embed thesupplier rating facility in their directories and benefit from newrevenue streams. Although apparel is being used as an embodiment of theinvention, it should be understood that the invention may be applied toany industry, such as furniture, electronics, textiles, chemicals, toys,food, and the like. In addition, services in addition to a ratingsservice may be facilitated through the invention, such as for billing,transactional settlement, insurance, social networking for buyers, andthe like. In embodiments, the invention may be applied to a broadspectrum of industries where buyers and sellers are located acrossdiverse environments, and supplier-product information and ratings arefragmented.

The supplier rating facility may provide a ratings platform wherebuyers/suppliers may compare and contrast potential suppliers/buyers.The ratings platform may generate and maintain ratings of suppliers,buyers, countries, geographic regions, marketplaces, commodities and thelike. The ratings may be presented in various forms including a listingof supplier ratings as shown in FIG. 1. The supplier rating list 100 inFIG. 1 includes a keyword 102 around which the list is based. Althoughone keyword is shown in FIG. 1, a keyword phrase, group of keywords,logical combination of keywords, and the like may be used as a basis forthe list 100. In an interactive embodiment of the list of FIG. 1selecting the keyword 102 (e.g. knitting) may allow a user to makechanges to the keyword 102 to present a revised list 100. Also in aninteractive embodiment of the list of FIG. 1, a menu 104 may be providedto facilitate access to other aspect of the platform and to one or morewebpages associated with the platform. The list 100 may include anynumber of suppliers that satisfy the keyword 102 criteria; in theexample of FIG. 1 the list includes 10 suppliers. The number ofsuppliers presented may be limited to fewer than the total number thatmatch the keyword 102 criteria. Aspect of the list 100, such as a limiton the number of supplies in the list 100 may be controlled bypreferences (e.g. user, platform, supplier, and the like).

The list 100 may include entries 108 for each supplier that satisfiesthe keyword 102 criteria. An entry 108 may include an overall rating 110also known as the “Panjiva rating”, the supplier name 112, selectedbibliographic data 114, and the like. Preferences as indicated above mayimpact what information is presented in an entry 108 and the embodimentof FIG. 1 is only an example of one set of information to be presented.Each supplier may be given an overall rating 110 that may be based on a100 point scale so that an overall rating 110 may be between one andone-hundred as shown in FIG. 1.

An alternate view of supplier rating is exemplified in FIG. 2 whichdepicts a supplier scorecard 200, which may be a detailed view of asupplier aspects related to the overall rating 110. The scorecard 200enhance the overall rating 110 by providing details about the overallrating 110. A comparative rating 202 may show the supplier overallrating 110 in light of an average of other suppliers and may include anindication of a confidence in the overall rating 110. This scorecard 200may assess the supplier's relative strength along a variety ofdimensions. Leveraging a wide variety of data sources, the supplierrating facility may rate suppliers along key dimensions 204 also knownas “Panjiva Analysis” ratings, in a plurality of categories such asbusiness basics, international track record, certifications, and thelike. The rating platform may also allow buyers to rate suppliers alongseveral dimensions. The scorecard 200 may include the buyer ratings 208.In embodiments, the ratings platform may become a place where buyers goto hold suppliers accountable. In embodiments, reports such as thescorecard 200 may be made available to users in online and print forms.

In embodiments, a backend infrastructure may automatically generatecustomized documents by programmatically generating a representation ofthe document in a typesetting language such as Tex, LaTeX, and the like,which may then be processed and turned into a PDF document.

The “Business Basics” section of the Supplier scorecard 200 may help abuyer assess whether a company is legitimate and worthy of considerationas a potential partner. Included in “Business Basics” may be informationon whether a company has registered with authorities, as well as anassessment of a trading environment in the supplier's country, combiningmacro contextual information with data that is specific to an individualsupplier and the like. A facility for determining a track record in aparticular jurisdiction may use government and third-party data, and mayassess the amount of experience a supplier has serving thatjurisdiction, and the loyalty that a supplier's customers havedemonstrated, and the like. The “Standards Compliance” section of theSupplier scorecard 200 may document whether a supplier has beencertified as meeting international standards for quality management,respect for the environment, social responsibility, product safety, andthe like.

The ratings scorecard 200 may include a plurality of analysisdimensions, such as county context, business legitimacy, publicrecognition, amount of experience, caliber of customers, customerloyalty, specialization, quality management, social responsibility,environmental responsibility, and the like. Buyer feedback dimensionsmay include product quality, customer service, timeliness of delivery,language skills, sample-making ability, respect for intellectualproperty, and the like. Supplier information may include contactinformation, areas of expertise, caliber of customers, ratings, and thelike. A confidence in buyer feedback may be established by determiningthat the feedback is being provided by a supplier who is or recently wasreceiving shipments from the supplier. This can be done by ensuring thattransaction records validate that at least some supplier shipments weresupplied to the buyer providing the feedback. In embodiments,information utilized in the formation of the ratings scorecard 200 maybe from shipment history, such as frequency, quantity, and the like;shipment capacity estimation, which may be based on shipment data asopposed to information provided by the supplier.

Contact information may include making all contact information availableto subscribers, so that they may directly contact suppliers. Areas ofexpertise may tell a buyer which products a supplier has shipped, whichmaterials it has used, which techniques it has employed, and whether ithas produced men's apparel, women's apparel, or both. Caliber ofcustomers may tell a buyer which types of customers a supplier hasserved, such as premium, mass, discount, and/or niche customers. Inembodiments buyers may rate suppliers with whom they have done business.After a buyer rates a supplier, the supplier rating facility may verifythat that the two have actually done business together, such as byidentifying a corresponding customs records that shows an actual importtransaction in which the buyer imported goods from the supplier, from abill of lading, from a bank-issued receipt, and the like. Thus, methodsand systems disclosed herein include methods and systems for deterringfraudulent ratings by verifying the existence of the transactionpurportedly rated by the buyer. This may prevent false ratings that areeither too positive (such as by an affiliate or cohort of the supplier)or too negative (such as by a competing supplier posing as a buyer).After verification, the buyer's rating may become part of the supplier'sscorecard. As part of the verification process, the buyer's identity maybe revealed to the supplier. However, in embodiments the buyer'sidentity may be obscured so that it does not appear on the supplierrating facility's website and is not shared with anyone else. Inembodiments, only buyers who have provided feedback on their suppliersmay view buyer feedback. In embodiments, a computer facility forrecording transactions associated with one or more buyers with one ormore sellers may include a user interface that may facilitatedetermination of entity score based on transactional data. Thetransactional data may be related to the shipping details of the goodsand services associated with different entities. In an example, entitiessuch as buyers may order goods and services from the sellers resultingin transactions. An aggregation facility may collect, combine oraggregate transactions associated with different entities. Subsequently,an association facility may facilitate association of transactions withdifferent entities. The transactions may be analyzed by the analysisfacility to generate an entity score corresponding to each entity.

In embodiments, rating a supplier, buyer, or other entity may result ina score that is at least partially based on predefined criteria, such asa user provided criteria. Alternatively, the system and methods hereinmay facilitate rating of a supplier, buyer, or other entity based one ormore algorithms. The rating algorithms may be manually selected, or maybe selected automatically based on a set of algorithm selection rules.In an example, a supplier may be known in the industry as highlycredible. One or more rating algorithms may be applied to transactiondata and may use predefined criteria for the algorithms tomathematically determine the credibility of the supplier. Thisdetermined credibility rating may be provided to the buyer through auser interface of the platform.

In embodiments, the entity score may be based in part on transactionaldata related to the shipments by the entity such as delivery data,amount shipped, location of shipment and the like. In an example, asupplier providing goods and services within the stipulated deliverydate may garner higher ratings compared to the suppliers who failed todeliver on time.

In embodiments, the entity score may be based on one more factorsincluding country context, business legitimacy information, publicrecognition, amount of experience, caliber of customers of the supplier,customer loyalty for the supplier, degree of specialization of thesupplier, and feedback from previous customers or some other factors.Further, each factor or group of factors may include a list ofparameters. A user interface may be configured to allow a user to selectsome or all the parameters from this group to generate an entity rating.In an example, the group country content may include variables such asGNI per capita, currency volatility, cost to export, politicalstability, and the like. The user interface may allow a user to selectGNI per capita and cost to export to generate a country context valuethat would be applied to calculate an entity rating. Furthermore,determination of the entity score may depend partially or completely onsome or all the parameters selected from some or all the groups, asdescribed herein and elsewhere. In an example, a buyer who may beinterested in knowing the quality of a product or service provided by asupplier may select feedback from previous customer groups on which tobase an entity score for the supplier. This group may further includeparameters such as timely delivery of goods, quality of goods, number oftransactions and the like. rather than choosing just the group rating todetermine an entity rating, the buyer may choose some or all theparameters from this group to determine the entity score associated withthe supplier. In another example, the score associated with the suppliermay be determined based on two or more groups comprising multipleparameters, such as the group pertaining to the degree of specializationof the supplier and the group pertaining to feedback from previouscustomers. The buyer may select the group degree of specialization andone or more parameters from the group. Similarly, the buyer may selectone or more parameters from the feedback from the previous customersgroup. The entity score may be determined based on parameters selectedin each of the groups.

A user interface, such as the user interface of FIG. 2 may be used topresent the various ratings, scores, and rating factors to be applied tothe entity rating score.

In embodiments, a supplier rating facility or buyer rating facility maytake ratings along each of key dimensions, weight the ratings to accountfor the fact that some dimensions are more important than others,calculate an overall rating 110, and the like. In embodiments, ratingsmay provide a measure of caliber, such as the caliber of a buyer or thecaliber of a supplier.

The supplier rating facility may rate suppliers across a plurality ofdifferent dimensions, some of which may derive from actual transactionaldata, such as customs data, with others based on sources such as Dun &Bradstreet, the World Bank, auditing firms for various certifications,government sources, and the like. In embodiments, more weight may begiven to recent data, data for larger transactions, data for higherquality buyers, or other types of data with respect to which there is anindicator that the data may have higher relevance than other types ofdata. The supplier rating facility may also provide a more intuitiveunderstanding to ratings, by considering caliber of customers, customerloyalty, specialization, and the like. Caliber of customers may involvemanually grouping buyers into distinct bands or tiers, such as premium,mass-market, discount, niche, and the like and then computing a sumbased on the newness of each buyer-supplier relationship and the tier ofeach buyer.

In embodiments, rating for a supplier may be based on the aggregatedtransactional customs data, a user defined criteria, customs datarelated to transactions by the supplier with a third party or on someother parameters. In an example, a supplier may be rated based on thenumber of transactions done with a particular buyer. In another example,a user may define adherence to delivery data as a criteria for ratingthe supplier. In addition, the rating of the supplier may be based atleast in part on loyalty as indicated by an analysis of customstransactions. Furthermore, the determination of rating for the suppliermay based on an amount of supplier experience as indicated by customstransactions related to the number of shipments, duration of supplierexperience as indicated by shipments, size of transactions as indicatedby past shipments, extent of international experience as indicated bypast shipments, extent of country-relevant experience as indicated bypast shipments and the like.

In embodiments, a rating for a buyer may be based on aggregatedtransactional customs data, customs data related to transactions of thebuyer with a third party or some other parameter. In an example, ratingsfor the buyer may be based on the feedback about the buyer provided byone or more suppliers. In addition, ratings for the buyer may also bebased on two or more factors selected from a group including the countrycontext of a party, the business legitimacy of a party, whether a partyis registered with government authorities, an assessment of a tradingenvironment in a country, macroeconomic information, public recognitionof a party, industry awards, industry certifications, amount ofexperience, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of domestic experience, extent of internationalexperience, caliber of customers, customer loyalty, degree ofspecialization, specialization in product categories, specialization inmanufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specialization ingender, feedback from customers, feedback from buyers, feedback onproduct quality, feedback on customer service, feedback on timeliness ofdelivery, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, standards of compliance,certifications, and certifications with respect to specific vendorstandards and the like.

In embodiments, the rating of the buyer may be based on loyalty asindicated by an analysis of customs transactions. In an example, a buyermay be rated based on the number of transactions with a particularsupplier in a specific time frame. In addition, the buyer may be ratedbased on an amount of experience as indicated by customs transactionsrelated to the number of shipments, duration of experience as indicatedby shipments, size of transactions as indicated by past shipments,extent of international experience as indicated by past shipments,extent of country-relevant experience as indicated by past shipments andthe like.

In embodiments, a rating may be made of customer loyalty for a supplier.A customer loyalty rating method may include analyzing the set of buyerswho have done business with each supplier over the course of severalyears, and identifying ‘loyalty periods,’ intervals in which a buyerconsistently sources from a given supplier, and ‘switches,’ where abuyer ceases obtaining a given set of products from one supplier andbegins sourcing from another supplier. Suppliers for whom there havebeen many switches may be given lower ratings, while suppliers with longloyalty periods and few switches may be given higher ratings.

In embodiments, a rating may relate to the degree of specialization of asupplier. A specialization rating method may decompose suppliershipments into dimensions, such as product category, technique,material, gender, and the like. These dimensions may be independent ofthe rating dimensions or may be used as a factor in rating.

In embodiments, methods and systems may include methods for generatingraw scores. Generation of raw scores may use a variety of techniques totransform raw customs data and other third-party data into meaningfulratings. Consideration may be given to customer loyalty, caliber ofcustomers, amount of experience, specialization, country context,business legitimacy, environmental responsibility, socialresponsibility, quality management, public recognition, and the like.Customer loyalty rating may include identifying shipping patterns, buyerpatterns, loyalty periods, and the like. Caliber of customer ratings mayinclude assigning a buyer tier, length of time in that tier, age ofbuyer, and the like. Experience ratings may include evaluating number ofshipments, duration of experience, size of transactions handled, and thelike. Specialization ratings may include or reference a measure of theextent to which a supplier focuses on a narrow range of products,materials, and/or techniques. A supplier having government registrationrecords, a Dun & Bradstreet DUNS number, or other evidence of businesslegitimacy may provide business legitimacy ratings. Environmental,social, product safety, and quality management ratings may be derivedfrom a supplier having appropriate certifications, and the like. Publicrecognition ratings may include reference to government and industryawards, and the like. In embodiments, high risk suppliers and high riskbuyers may be identified, such as in association with individuals andorganizations that work with high risk suppliers and high risk buyers.Country context ratings may be related to the country in which asupplier is located, as well as data supplied by the World Bank,International Monetary Fund, and other sources, about that country.Other sources may include GNI per capita, currency volatility, cost toexport, political stability, credit_rank, export_cost,gci_efficiency_enhancers, and the like. A country context computationmay include calculating a weighted sum of log(gni_per_capita),credit_rank, log(export_cost) and gci_efficiency_enhancers that may bethen thresholded into final score buckets. The weights and thresholdsused in the country context computation may have been determined usingmachine learning techniques (e.g. decision trees and principal componentanalysis) to determine the relevant features to weight, appropriateweights, and effective thresholds.

Generating ratings from raw scores may include a weighting,standardization or normalization factor applied to raw data to produce astandard score that may be centered on zero, and then normalized to arating between 0 and 100. These values may then be applied to ascorecard 200 that presents the normalized data for a supplier. Inembodiments, the ratings may be scaled linearly to provide a mean ofapproximately 50, as in a Gaussian distribution.

In addition, ratings may be customized to individual buyer preferences,such as by having buyer's rate suppliers with whom they have donebusiness. ratings may then be tuned to best match this empirical view ofa buyer's preferences. Such an approach may use a machine learningtechnique such as a support vector machine. Over time, trends in ratingsmay then be captured and displayed to the buyer. Such trends may enablea graph-theory analysis (e.g., minimum cut, maximum flow, cliques, andthe like) on buyer-supplier networks to determine the relationshipsbetween groups of buyers and suppliers, which may lead to additionalvalue-added services such as improving production allocation for buyers.

Referring to FIG. 3, integration of transactional data with data fromnon-transactional data sources is shown. A computer facility 302 mayreceive transaction records associated with a plurality of buyers 318such as 318A and 318B and/or a plurality of sellers 320 such as 320A and320B. Furthermore, the computer facility 302 may include an aggregationfacility 304, an association facility 308, a storage facility 310, anintegration facility 312, an analysis facility 314, and the like. Theaggregation facility 304 may collect and combine the transaction recordsassociated with buyers 318 and suppliers 320 for processing at theassociation facility 308. The association facility 308 may enableassociation of transactions with different entities such as buyer 318Aand supplier 320B. The association facility 308 may be coupled to any ofthe other facilities within the computer facility 302, such as theintegration facility 312 which may receive non-transaction data fromnon-transaction sources 318. The analysis facility 314 may facilitateevaluation of suppliers 320 and buyers 318 based on the data integratedfrom other sources 318 and the data received from the associationfacility 308.

In embodiments, public records may include customs records apart fromother records. The customs record may include information associatedwith an entity as captured by a customs organization. The informationmay be useful in identifying the different transactions associated withthe entity's billing based on the entity's custom identification number.

Data sources may leverage data from several hundred data sources, suchas, International Oeko-Tex Association, Social AccountabilityInternational, Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP),Fifty-five ISO 9001 auditing firms, Forty-six ISO 14001 auditing firms,Forty-seven OHSAS 18001 auditing firms, Two GB/T 18885 auditing firms,United States Department of Homeland Security, Ministry of Commerce ofthe People's Republic of China, General Administration of Customs of thePeople's Republic of China, and the like. In embodiments, custom datamay be from countries all over the world, covering exports and imports,where an import record may be matched up with an export record.

Tools used in the analysis of supplier and buyer data may include amerger tool, a suggestive merger tool, a buyer caliber tool, a buyermarketing tool, a name chooser tool, a country manager, an API, aproduct keyword manager tool, a statistics tool, a report generationtool, a supplier marketing tool, a name updater, and the like. Any ofthese tools may be embodied in the facilities of computer facility 302.

In embodiments, aggregated customs data may be processed to identifytransactions associated with different types of entities such as buyersand/or suppliers. In addition, based on the transactions associated withdifferent entities, an entity type may be determined from one or moreentity types present in the transactions. In an example, an entity maysupply woolen clothes and the transactions associated with the shipmentsof the woolen clothes may be recorded as being provided by ‘ABC co’. Inanother transaction, the same entity may be recorded as ‘ABC Company’.This variation may be due to a difference in recording of transactionsof customs data due to variations in filling data in the customs formrather than the entities being different entities. A data mergingfacility may allow automatic merging of transaction records describedabove under a single entity based on the inference made on grounds ofsimilarity of data. In this example, the variations ‘ABC co’ and ‘ABCCompany’ may form a valid case of merging of data based on the minorvariation in entity name. Alternatively to automatic merging, or inaddition to it, suggestions for merging similar data based on similarityin data elements may be provided to a user. In the above example,records relating to transactions ‘ABC co’ and ‘ABC Company’ may bepresented to the user with a suggestion to merge them under a singleentity based on similarity of data elements. The similarity of dataelement in the records may be determined by the data merging facility.Based on the user's response, automatic merging of the two entity namesmay be learned by the platform.

A variety of tools/techniques for identifying companies that may besimilar in some respect may be provided. A user interface may providesimilarity features so that a user may identify companies that aresimilar. Such a user interface may facilitate identifying companies thatare similar to a company (e.g. a buyer or seller) being presented to theuser. The user may have selected a set of criteria for identifying aparticular company and may be presented with a utility that enables theuser to select these or other parameters associated with the particularcompany for finding similar companies. Identifying similar companies maybe based on weighted similarity criteria which may be selected by a userin the user interface, extracted from a user profile, automaticallyselected by a similarity engine, recommended to the user, and the like.Weighted similarity criteria may include a product mix, a minimumquantity, location of a supplier, or any other factor. For example, auser might select similarity criteria including: (i) supplying“Leather”, (2) sourcing from “China”, and (3) a minimum order of “10square yards” with the minimum order criteria weighted at 1.5× the othertwo criteria.

To facilitate accessing information (e.g. profiles, ratings, etc) ofsimilar companies, a similarity engine may generate suggestions ofsimilar companies based on search criteria. A user may enter the searchcriteria through a programming interface (e.g. an API), and the like.The similar company suggestions may include a ranking that is based onthe level of similarity between the search criteria and the searchedresults. For example, a user may search for suppliers that supply aspecific product and operate in a specific location. The similarityengine may generate one or more suggestions for companies that aresimilar and may rank the suggestions based on similarity to a searchcriteria. Similarity suggestions may be based on user behaviors andinteractions with the system. The criteria used for making thesuggestions may be weighted based on the user history of searches,rating reviews, and the like.

The similarity engine may alternatively be used to identify potentialalternatives for a given company and those alternatives (e.g.competitors) may be offered an opportunity to provide a message, such asan advertisement, to the user while the user is viewing the similarcompany. For example, a user searching for supplier of “leather goods”in China might be sent offers related to a supplier of “leather goods”in India. The similarity engine may be useful to help vendors who offerproducts or services that may compliment other products or services togain visibility with users seeking information about products to whichthey offer similar services. In an example, a user might be sent offersrelated to “leather dye” or “leather dying services provider” when theuser searched for suppliers of “leather products”. Alternatively, thesimilarity engine may notify a similar company of searches that wereperformed for which that company was suggested as a similar company.This information may be useful to a company to adjust the information bywhich it may be identified by the similarity engine.

An entity may be associated with one or more names for performingtransactions that may be captured in customs records. As describedabove, the difference may be due to a variation in recording of thecustoms data. The systems and methods described herein may facilitatemerging of any number of transactions that should be associated with aparticular entity even though the records show a plurality of similarbut varied entity names.

In addition to facilitating processing aggregated customs data so as toassociate a set of transactions with an entity, a plurality oftransactions that are properly associated with a plurality of entitiesmay be merged under an entity type for purposes of evaluating thetransactions and entities associated therewith. The merged records maybe useful in evaluating a market segment, consortium of companies,industry segment, regional results, class of entities, and the like. Inan example, transactions associated with several entities may be mergedbased on the basis of the transactions being associated with a singlebuyer. Even though the transactions call out different suppliers indifferent industries, the single buyer is a basis for processing thetransactions as if they were merged.

An entity type may be defined based on any aspect of an entity that maybe used to process customs transaction records. The methods and systemsof filtering, classification, and clustering of transactions asdescribed herein may be applied to identify transactions that aremergeable under an entity type. In an example, a buyer may initiatepurchase transactions with four suppliers of components to produce anitem. The transactions between any of the four suppliers and the commonbuyer can be merged (or tagged as mergeable) as having a common entitytype such as “supplier to common buyer”. Other suppliers who ship itemsto the common buyer may have their transactions with the common buyermerged under the same entity type.

In many cases multiple data records exist for a single supplier, but therelationship of those records to that single supplier is ambiguous. Inan example, the name of the supplier might appear in one field in onerecord, but in a completely different field in another record. This isoften the case in customs data, where forms are filled out withinformation in various fields, notwithstanding the purportedstandardization of the forms. In embodiments, a merger tool may be usedto merge data records of two apparent suppliers that should really beone supplier. The merger tool may evaluate an address, and if the samein two records, select a parent record and identify child records, uponwhich records are merged into a single record. In embodiments, a mergertool may merge records that are on the same page or more generally mergerecords across a database. In embodiments, a merger tool may use apattern matching technique to identify potential candidates for mergingof records

As shown in FIG. 4, an indicator of economic leverage may be provided.The economic leverage may be based on an analysis of customstransactions data. The indication of the economic leverage may beprovided by an indication facility 412 of the computer facility 402. Thecomputer facility 402 may also include a collection facility 414, astorage facility 410, an aggregation facility 404, an associationfacility 408, and an indication facility 412. The collection facility414 may collect a plurality of records of customs transactions of aplurality of buyers 418. In addition, the collection facility 414 maycollect a plurality of records of customs transactions of a plurality ofsuppliers 424. In an example, the collection facility 414 may collectthe record of customs transactions of buyer 420 and buyer 422. Inaddition, the collection facility 424 may collect the record of customstransactions of supplier 428 and supplier 430. The storage facility 410may store the plurality of records of customs transactions of theplurality of suppliers 424 and the plurality of buyers 418. Theaggregation facility 404 may aggregate the transactions. The associationfacility 408 may associate the transactions of the plurality ofsuppliers 424 and plurality of buyers 418. The association facility 408may associate the transactions with entities. The entities may include,but may not be limited to, companies, buyers, sellers, suppliers,distributors, factories, subsidiaries of a supplier and the like. Ananalysis facility 432 may analyze the aggregated transactions. Theindication facility 412 may provide an indication of economic leveragewith respect to an entity based on an analysis of the aggregatedtransactions. In an example, the indication facility 412 may indicate tothe buyer 420 that it would be economical to buy 40 tons of silk fabricfrom the supplier 428. Similarly, other economic indicators may beprovided to the plurality of buyers 418 or the plurality of suppliers424.

In embodiments, the indicator of economic leverage may be with respectto the supplier 428 based on transactional customs data for the supplier428. In embodiments, the indicator of economic leverage may be withrespect to a supplier 428 based on transactional customs data for aparty other than the supplier 428. In embodiments, the indicator ofeconomic leverage may be with respect to a buyer 420 based ontransactional customs data for the buyer 420. In embodiments, theindicator 420 of economic leverage may be with respect to a buyer 420based on transactional customs data for a party other than the buyer420.

In embodiments, as shown in FIG. 5, a prediction facility 502 maypredict an action of an entity. The action may be based on the analysisof the aggregated transactions. The prediction may relate to whether thesupplier 428 will work with the buyer 420 of a given size. Theprediction may also relate to whether the supplier 428 will work withorders of a given size.

In embodiments, the prediction may be of an action of the buyer 420based on an analysis of customs data for the buyer 420 transactions. Theprediction may be related to a price, a change in price, a change insupplier, a quantity ordered by the buyer 420 and the like. Inembodiments, the prediction may be of a buyer action of based on ananalysis of customs data for transactions by a party other than thebuyer 420. In embodiments, the prediction may be of a supplier actionbased on an analysis of customs data for transactions by the buyer 420.In embodiments, the prediction may be of a supplier action based on ananalysis of customs data for transactions by a party other than thebuyer 420. In embodiments, the prediction may be related to a potentialclosure. The closure may be of a subsidiary, a factory, a company andthe like. Those skilled in the art would appreciate that the predictionfacility 502 may provide the predictions to the plurality of buyers 418,plurality of suppliers 424 or some other entities.

In embodiments, as shown in FIG. 6, a recommendation facility 602 mayprovide recommendations based on analysis of customs transactions. In anexample, the recommendation facility 602 may recommend to the buyer 420to buy 40 tons of silk fabric at a discounted price from the supplier428 based on transaction records indicating that the supplier hasreceived returns of the silk from buyers. Similar recommendations may beprovided to the plurality of buyers 418 and to the plurality ofsuppliers 424.

In embodiments, the recommendation may be based on analysis of customsdata for the buyer 420 transactions. In embodiments, the recommendationmay be based on analysis of customs data for transactions by a partyother than the buyer 420. In embodiments, the recommendation may bebased on analysis of customs data for transactions by the buyer 420. Inembodiments, the recommendation may be based on analysis of customs datafor transactions by a party other than the buyer 420.

In embodiments, the recommendation may be based on prioritization offactors by a user. In an example, the buyer 420 may require 40 tons ofsilk within 4 days. The recommendation facility 602 may recommend buying40 tons of silk from supplier 430 based on its manufacturing capacity of50 tons per day and ability to provide the required silk within thestipulated time. In embodiments, the recommendation may be based on auser-specified rating factor.

In embodiments, a suggestive merger tool may use more sophisticatedtechniques to suggest which buyers or suppliers should be mergedtogether, such as the supplier in question listed, then producingpotential matches. Such techniques may use text similarity metrics onthe name and the address and performing algorithmic steps such assorting the tokens by alphabetical order, so word transpositions do notchange lexical distance of names in pattern matching. Such techniquesmay determine how each word in a given buyer or supplier's name orbuyer's name contributes to the uniqueness of the name, and uses thisinformation to make relevant suggestions for merging. In embodiments, asuggestive merger tool may use a machine learning approach to performpattern matching or otherwise suggest merger of records, such as atechnique with boosted trees or other machine learning techniques.

A buyer caliber rating may be assigned manually by checking a box basedon a facilitator's or host's assessment of the caliber of the buyer, orby automated techniques. In embodiments, a search link may be providedfor each buyer, such as one that retrieves search results from a searchengine, directory, rating system or other source of information aboutthe buyer. In embodiments, an interface, such as an overall buyermanager, may assist suppliers in searching for different buyers.

In embodiments, a buyer marketing tool may break down data for aparticular supplier, such as addresses (from customs data), raw customsrecords, records that show customer loyalty periods and switches toother suppliers, specific breakdowns of what the supplier has shipped(e.g. in terms of product category, material, technique, gender of theshipped garments, and the like), breakdowns of the size of the shipmentsthe supplier has made, breakdowns of the number of shipments that thesupplier has made each month over some time period, as to determine theestimated capacity of a supplier, and the estimated minimum shipmentthat a supplier is willing to produce. In an example, a tool may show abreakdown of suppliers (e.g. showing a number of suppliers, such as 35suppliers in ratings for each), where it is possible to see a history ofwhich suppliers buyers have used. This may allow marketers to evaluatetheir performance relative to other suppliers with whom they compete.

A country manager tool may be used to add data on countries (such as forthe country context dimension of an overall rating 110 or analysis).

In embodiments, an application programming interface may be provided forthe platform described herein, whereby other computer programs mayaccess the reports generated by the platform, such as accessing overallratings 110, specific components of ratings, results of particularalgorithms, or data sources used in the platform. Thus, other partiesthat engage in global trade, such as clients of the facilitator andpartners, may obtain access to the platform, allowing the ratingsmanaged by the platform to become a standard measure by which suppliersare rated.

A product keyword manager tool may provide an ontology or hierarchy fora search interface, such as using graphs, charts, and the like. Themanager may allow a facilitator to add or delete sub-categories to acategory. Keywords associated with each of the categories may be usefulfor: (1) getting the data (allowing a user to scan through raw text ofcustoms data, looking for these keywords, which is one way for thefacilitator to know that a supplier has shipped something within acategory; In an example, a search for infant clothing might search forall sub-categories, using words such as baby, infant, kiddy, kid,layette, maternity, newborn, toddler, and the like); and (2) usingkeywords for text entry into the search field (such as synonyms to getbetter search results). In an example, in a hierarchy of materials,there are sub-materials of materials, and each has keywords associatedwith it. In embodiments, a facilitator may engage in a process (manualor automatic) to generate key words, such as using glossaries that listall of the products and materials, with specific definitions. Inembodiments, algorithms may be used to determine the market vertical(e.g., apparel supplier or electronics supplier, etc.) of a supplierbased on the aggregate contents of all of its shipments. In embodiments,customs records may be utilized to identify what industry or verticalthe material is in.

A statistics tool may assist in providing distributions of data. Thus, afacilitator may support statistical distributions for all dimensions ofdata analyzed by the methods and systems of the platform.

A bucket boundary check tool may assist in testing that suppliers thatfall within specific rating “buckets” or bins (e.g., Excellent,Unproven, etc.) by showing suppliers that are at the high and lowboundary of each bucket.

A report generation tool may automatically build PDF reports or reportsin other output formats, such as PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and the like.The report generation tool can be used as an administrative tool, or asa tool to allow users or clients to build custom reports, such as onesthat incorporate some or all of the data generated by the platform. Inan example, a user may specify which supplier or suppliers the reportshould include. A report could be made vertical-specific, covering anumber of suppliers in a vertical, such as a theme or characteristicgrouping, or it could relate to standout suppliers (such as ones withhigh customer loyalty ratings, top amounts of experience, or the like).In embodiments, a user may turn on or off various sections. Inembodiments, the end product of a report may be a link that allows theuser to download the report (in PDF format or some other format) orwhich sends the report via email (in PDF format or some other format).

In embodiments, a buyer marketing tool may provide information aboutwhat product materials, product techniques, and the like particularbuyers require from their suppliers. Such a tool may also provideinformation relating to how many shipments particular buyers importedover time, as well as the breakdown of shipment sizes.

A marketing tool may be used by an operator of the platform to at leastidentify opportunities of marketing the products and services associatedwith the platform to suppliers, buyers, and others. The marketing toolcan also be accessed by suppliers as shown in FIG. 7 and by buyers asdepicted in FIG. 8. However, when used by the operator or owner of theplatform or of an implementation of a portion of the platform, themarketing tool has significant capabilities. The marketing tool may workcollaboratively with other elements of the platform, such as elementsthat perform aggregation, association, merging, storage, collection,analysis, user interface and the like. A marketing tool may be used toidentify instances of potential scenarios (e.g. suppliers in financialdistress) to offer entities that may be potentially impacted by thescenario instance (e.g. the supplier's shippers, buyers, suppliers ofraw goods, and the like) with services and products available throughthe methods and systems described herein.

The marketing tool may also work cooperatively with a user interface tofacilitate an operator entering parameters of marketing opportunityscenarios that the marketing tool can evaluate. The entered scenarioparameters and attributes may be applied to an analysis of customstransaction data and marketing opportunities may be presented to theoperator through the user interface.

As shown in FIG. 7, a marketing tool 712 may be provided for a supplier728. The marketing tool 712 may be provided in a computer facility 702.As explained in the description for FIGS. 4, 5 and 6, the computerfacility 702 may include a collection facility 714, a storage facility710, an aggregation facility 704, and an association facility 708. Thecollection facility 714 may collect a plurality of public records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers 718 and a plurality ofsuppliers 724. In an example, the collection facility 714 may collectthe public records of transactions between buyer 720 and supplier 722.The storage facility 710 may store the plurality of public records oftransactions among a plurality of buyers 718 and a plurality ofsuppliers 724. The aggregation facility 704 may aggregate thetransactions. The association facility 708 may associate thetransactions with various entities that may include, but may not belimited to companies, buyers, sellers, suppliers, distributors,factories, subsidiaries of a supplier and the like. An analysis facility732 may analyze the aggregated transactions. The marketing tool 712 maysuggest a marketing strategy for the supplier 728 based on analysis oftransactional data from public records. In an example, the marketingtool 712 may suggest to the supplier 728 that it would be lucrative tosell 100 tons of silk fabric every week to the buyer 720 located in theUnited States of America. Those skilled in the art would appreciate thatthe marketing tool 712 may suggest marketing strategies to a pluralityof suppliers 724 simultaneously.

As shown in FIG. 8, a marketing tool 802 for the buyer 720 may beprovided. The marketing tool 802 may be provided in a computer facility702. The marketing tool 802 may suggest a marketing strategy for thebuyer 720 based on analysis of transactional data from public records.In an example, the marketing tool 802 may suggest to the buyer 720 thatit would be lucrative to buy 50 tons of silk fabric on a monthly basisfrom the supplier 728 located in China. Those skilled in the art wouldappreciate that the marketing tool 802 may suggest marketing strategiesto a plurality of buyers 718 simultaneously.

Processing customs transactions and other records may involve amulti-step method. Data from customs organizations, such as US Customsmay be provided on a removable computer memory such as a CD, DVD, flashmemory, memory stick, USB memory card, and any other type of removableor portable memory device. Alternatively the customs data may beacquired via a network, such as the Internet, a dialup connection, avirtual private network, a dedicated network, and the like. The data mayalso be converted from a proprietary format for further processing bythe platform. Each customs organization, and within any customsorganization for a particular country may have a different format orstorage device for records. Conversion may be performed on the data sothat the end result is independent of the physical format of deliveryand the logical formatting of the information. In this way data in asubstantially unified format may be processed by the methods and systemsof supplier rating and the like that are herein disclosed. In anexample, US customs data may be provided on a CD and may be in a COBOLformat. The data on the CD may be retrieved and automatically loaded toa server. The server or another computing device may convert the datafrom the COBOL format to an XML format. The XML formatted data may beloaded to a database such as a Postgres database for further processing.In this example XML format represents a unified format for the customsdata.

Processing the converted transaction data may include multiple steps ofdata analysis in which a confidence level may be applied. Confidencelevels may be grouped into confidences bands that may help target eachtransaction toward one of merging (high confidence band), suggesthuman-aided merging (medium confidence band) and do not merge (low orlacking confidence band). Analysis of the transaction data may revealimportant information about the entities involved in the transactions.In an example, a single entity may appear as a buyer in one transaction,a shipper in another and a supplier in a third. Ensuring that eachtransaction is properly associated with the entity as its intendedfunction (buyer, shipper, and supplier) may be accomplished throughvarious analysis and assessment techniques including, similarityassessment, filtering, classification, clustering, and the like.

Processing of customs data may also include text mining. Text mining mayinclude searching for key words, terms, or phrases that are known,predetermined, or specified for the mining operation. An ontology ofterms, such as ‘gender dyeing’ may be applied in text mining. Inaddition, synonyms of keywords may be mined. Text mining alsofacilitates populating reports with various data, such as time seriesdata of shipments per month and weight of shipments per month.

Data may be further analyzed with a monitoring tool that may look foranomalies, such as peaks, and other statistical measures to identifypotentially important events that are captured in the transactions.Analyzing data for peaks and the like may help with activating buyers,suppliers, shippers, and other entities for use in the platform. Astatistical event, such as a spike in orders by a buyer that otherwisehad little transaction history may trigger an indication that the buyershould be activated for use in ratings of buyers, suppliers, and thelike. Alternatively, or in addition, an entity may be activated based onthe transactions for the entity complying with criteria such as ashipment quantity threshold, and the like.

Merging data ensures that all records of transactions associated with anentity (buyer, supplier, or the like) are properly recorded against thecorrect entity. However, due to the large number of data sources,substantial variations in how an entity may be identified in recordsfrom the data sources, parent-subsidiary entity relationships,transaction system limitations (e.g. limiting the number of charactersin an entity name), regional differences, dialect differences, use ofshort hand for entity information, various coding schemes used bybuyers, suppliers, and the like proper merging of data is complex anddifficult. Data may be received in tabular format with column headingsindicative of an expected type of data to be found on each row. INtabular format, data in each row under a column heading of “CompanyName” is expected to include a company name. Data may also be receivedin record/field format in which each field of each record includes afield identifier and a value. The platform analyzes the data in theseand may other disparate data formats to perform the merging functionsdescribed herein.

In a fundamental example, merging is taking two records for the sameentity that each has entity information that varies substantially onefrom the other and ensuring that the records are properly recordedagainst the one entity rather than being assigned to two separateentities. A merger tool may provide robust, accurate, and efficientmerging of data by resolving the variations, some of which are describedabove so that records for a single entity are merged, while ensuringthat records for a different entity are kept separate from the singleentity.

Within any given country, industry, region, or language there is nouniversal entity identifier that could be applied to the data records touniquely identify which entity is associated with each transactionrecord. Also, with data records being provided by sources from manycountries, in many industries, and across many languages the mergingchallenge is increased. A way to meet this challenge today is to performprocessing of the text that is present in the records to determine whichrecords should be merged under an entity. Various techniques of textassociation, filtering, character grouping, thesaurus lookup, machinelearning, natural language processing, search-based comparison,classification, known entity matching, clustering, and the like may beapplied to identify mergable records. The complexity and challengepresent in merging may require applying each technique in an intelligentway so that highly computation intensive processes such asclassification are used appropriately.

One objective of merging is to take a set of input records and matchthem to entities that are already known to the platform, such asentities already included in an entity database or other database of theplatform. When a match cannot be determined automatically with asufficient confidence level, then information may be presented to anoperator or user of the platform to make a final determination of theentity associated with the record(s).

The methods and techniques for identifying mergable records may beprogrammed into a processing unit and run in a sequence that facilitatesrapid and robust merging of records. Merging of records may be performedas a continuous process rather than a batch process so as new datasetsor changes to an existing dataset are presented, updates to mergablerelationships may be determined. Also, because updates or new datasetsmay be presented at any time, and without any particular coordinationamong them, continuous processing that is not necessarily tied to anyevent or schedule is preferred. At least three types of processing maybe performed on records for merging assessment: filtering,classification, and clustering. Each processing type will be describednow.

Because classification and clustering may be very expensive in terms ofcompute/processing time, filtering is applied to distinguish candidaterecords for classification from records that are unlikely to bemergeable under a single entity. Filtering provides various techniquesto help identify only the records that classification may have anychance of merging. Filtering for the purposes of merging may beconsidered a coarse sort of the records, capturing candidates forclassification and passing through those records that appear to be farremoved from the captured records. Filtering may be performed by avariety of filter-type algorithms. In one example filtering may beperformed by search engine software, such as the open source lucenesearch engine. In another example of filtering, sometimes referred to as“kgram filtering”, several small consecutive strings of characters arecaptured from each of two records and compared. Kgram filtering may bebased on techniques of dynamic programming. In an application of kgramfiltering, when a sufficient number of the character strings matchbetween the records, the records may be identified as potentialcandidates for further processing such as classification and clustering.One benefit to kgram filtering is that it offers the filter designermany options, such as allowing overlapping character strings, definingthe length of each character string, determining the quantity ofmatching strings required to mark the record(s) as classificationcandidates. In this way, an entity name or entity identifyinginformation (that may include entity name, logo, phone number, address,and the like) need not be an exact match, but instead needs enoughmatching character strings to exceed a kgram filter threshold. In anexample, a kgram filter may compare overlapping character strings (kgramfilter group) of 10 characters and may require that at least 10 of thecharacter strings must match (kgram filter threshold) for the record tobe identified as a potential candidate for classification andclustering. Because records received and processed by the platform mayhave information within certain fields that may be incorrectly placedthere (a personal name in an entity name field) filtering can be used toquickly separate out records that are incorrect.

Filtering is preferentially performed against the other records in anygiven data set, without specific consideration of existing entityprofiles or known data. This results in determining potentially mergablerecords within any given dataset. However, information about entities isknown to the platform from all previously processed datasets and thisinformation can be beneficially applied during filtering to improveconfidence levels in the filter results. Entities may be known to theplatform based on characteristics such as entity name, address, country,and the like. Filtering may employ the techniques described above toalso determine potential matches between known entities and entitiesfound in the dataset being processed. These potential matches with knownentities may be graded or rated in such a way as to improve theconfidence level of the relative matches found within the dataset.

Similarly, information from previously processed datasets may bebeneficially applied to help identify elements in the dataset beingprocessed. Data in the dataset being processed may be compared to dataknown to the platform (e.g. country names, freight forwarding services,addresses, product types, and the like) to produce a set of ratings ofhow well the data in the dataset being processed matches to the knowndata. The outcome of this matching may be combined with the known entitymatching to improve likelihood of the potential matches within thedataset being processed.

Another merge technique is called classification. Classification may beperformed on any records, although records that have been identified byfiltering as candidates for classification may yield faster and morerobust classification results. Because records with non-matching entityinformation may be records of a single entity, classification uses text,language, mathematical, and other analysis techniques to identify alikelihood that two records are from the same entity. Classificationincludes a variety of techniques including canonical adaptation,specific cleanups, multi field comparison (name, address, phone number,etc), edit distance algorithms, vector generation, machine learning,decision tree, and the like.

In canonical adaptation, entity information in records is adapted toeliminate differences that should not impact classification. Differencessuch as abbreviations of words (rd. for road, ave for avenue, CA forCalifornia, and the like) can be normalized in the records. Punctuationand other characters that may have minor impact on a classification maybe removed or marked to be ignored during various classification andclustering techniques. In addition to canonical adaptation targetedcleanups may be applied to further normalize the data. Cleanups may helpto resolve deficiencies in the records such as an incorrect country oforigin, which is a common deficiency. Cleanups may be based oninformation about the domain of the records to further enhance entityidentification and merging. Cleanups may be based on geographic orregional knowledge, market verticals, industry norms, and the like. Inan example, within a market vertical, variations of textile suppliersnames may be applied to quickly align the various names to a normalizedor canonical entity name; thereby reducing the degree of complexity thatfurther classification techniques will have to deal with. The result mayinclude less complex mathematical computation. Cleanups maybe targetedat specific aspects of the records, such as entity names, city names,street names, phone numbers, and the like. Any number of these cleanupsmay be applied sequentially or in parallel to data records to improvemergability of the records.

To account for differences in data entry that may result in a very lowclassification score, classification techniques herein are applied toindividual fields (entity name field, address field) as well as tocombinations of fields (entity name+address field) so that a record withan entity name in an address field can still be identified as mergablewith other records that have the address in the address field.

Data that has been cleaned or adapted as described above and elsewhereherein may be processed through edit distance metric algorithms such asWagner-Fischer, Levenshtein, Jaro-Winkler, and the like. The result ofwhich may be a complex vector of numbers that represent dimensions ofsimilarity associated with the various classification techniquesapplied. The vectors of similarity may be based on other classificationand text analysis techniques as may be know to those skilled in the art.All such classification and analysis techniques may be applied to therecords by the platform and are included herein.

Machine learning and other artificial intelligence techniques may beapplied to determine if similarity vectors of pairs of records identifyrecords that can be merged under a common entity. Through the use oftraining vectors, and decision tree logic, record mergability may befurther assessed and a measure of such mergability may be made availableto clustering techniques. The result may include an identification ofpair-wise matches among all of the classification candidate records.

Training vectors may be derived from transaction data. A set oftransactions may be identified as a training set that may be useful inestablishing prediction parameters for associating shipments withattributes such as a type of entity, type of supplier, type of product,product feature or attribute, type of material, and the like. A trainingset may also be useful for facilitating association of a shipment withan entity by enabling development of prediction parameters that may beused therefore. By identifying candidate relationships between shipmentsand attributes or entities, training sets of transaction records mayreduce the computational load required for comprehensively filtering,classifying and clustering. In an example, a record may be presented toa processing facility such as an analysis facility J32. The processingfacility may select prediction parameters based on one or more datafields in the record. Certain fields in the transaction record may becompared to a portion of the prediction parameters to predict an entityto associate to a transaction record.

Prediction of an attribute associated with a transaction or customsrecord or any other data record in various datasets may be useful forrolled up, aggregated, or otherwise cumulative transaction data. Becausetransaction records may be individual shipment records, aggregatedtransaction records, rolled up or summarized transaction data, and thelike, predicting an attribute that may be associated with rolled uptransactions may allow the platform to gain significant benefit fromotherwise non-specific data. In an example, US customs records mayrecord each shipment from China as an individual customs transactionrecord but the transactions may not identify the supplier, just theshipper and buyer. However, China may only provide a rolled uptransaction that cumulates similar shipments over a period of time, suchas a calendar month. The rolled-up transaction data from China may havesome data elements that distinguish it partially, such as a productidentifier, source region, shipper, supplier, and the like. The UScustoms transaction data for a calendar month may be used to identifyprediction parameters that may be applied to the China transaction datato predict the supplier. When US customs training set data such asshipment quantity, shipper, and the like are applied to the China data,a supplier may be predicted for the rolled up China transaction data.

An objective of clustering is to cluster as many data records thatshould be merged under a common entity as possible. Clustering mayresult in all of the variations of one entity being identified as oneentity. A technique for clustering that may be applied is referred toherein as p-percent clustering. In p-percent clustering, a pair matchthreshold is established and any record that matches at least thethreshold percent of records in any given cluster will be added to thecluster. In this way, although pair-wise matching identifies all pairsof matched records, clustering allows records that do not all match eachother to form a cluster. In an example, if a p-percent threshold is 25%then any record that pair-wise matches at least 25% of cluster membersmay be added to the cluster. In an embodiment, dynamic p-percent mayallow dynamic adjustment of p-percent based on an aspect of the cluster,records, and the like. In an example, p-percent may be set low for asmall cluster and may be increased for a large cluster. P-percentclustering ensures that records that have strong matches to some of themembers of the cluster can be properly included in the cluster.P-percent offers significant advantages over single dimension (singlelink) clustering techniques.

Filtering, classification, and clustering are important and facilitatemerging of intra data source records (e.g. new transactions for anexisting company) as well as external data source records (e.g. US toChina customs data records). These techniques are also applicable todetermine potential matches of records in non-transaction datasets (suchas financial reporting datasets, government records, industry records,company records, inventory records, market analysis records, and thelike.) Also these techniques may be useful in classifying entities intoindustries or markets.

These and other merge techniques can be applied to determine matchesbetween records in a new dataset and existing data, such as existingentities. Existing entities may be entities that are known to theplatform from processing various data sets. Each entity known to theplatform may be configured with an entity profile that may include orreference the various risk, opportunity, and other profiles describedherein. The merging techniques described herein may result in a matchlikelihood score or confidence level for each record processed. If thematch likelihood score is above a configurable threshold, the platformmay automatically convert a potential match to a known match andallocate the data record to a particular known entity. IF the matchlikelihood score is lower than the threshold, then various manualassisted techniques, such as the suggested merger tool described hereinor the user interfaces for configuring parameters to guide automaticmerging may be employed to facilitate converting a potential match to aknown match.

Because an entity profile is generally determined by at least an entityname and an entity address and it is common for an entity to beassociated with more than one address across various datasets,techniques for determining which of the various addresses are to beassociated with the entity as the primary address may be determined fromthe statistical mode of the records. Therefore, if an entity name isfound in various datasets to have three different addresses, the addressfound in the greatest number of matched data records may be allocated asthe primary address of the entity. However, the other addresses may alsobe allocated to the entity as tertiary addresses for the purposes offacilitating matching new data records (e.g. new datasets) to theentity.

Information about known entities may be weighted based on a confidencelevel of the entity. Information for entities for which the platform hasprocessed large amounts of data may be weighted more heavily in amatching process because the large amounts of data may statisticallyimprove the confidence in the information. As a result, data in adataset being processed that potentially matches to heavily weighteddata may more readily exceed an automatic match threshold.

As changes to datasets are processed, previously known matches may bebrought into question and may be marked for review. The automatedtechniques described above may not always provide a match likelihoodscore above the configurable threshold for changed records. In suchsituations, manual assist techniques and match adjustment userinterfaces may also be used to facilitate improvement or correction.

The platform may also incorporate business rules associated with variousdatasets. Business rules may impact the use of data records in adataset. Business rules may limit, for example what information may bemade available to the users of the platform, such as to preserve theconfidentiality of entities or individuals in the dataset. In anexample, while non-identifying information in a dataset (such as anindustry classification of an entity) may be forwarded to users of theplatform, the entity name may be required to be kept confidential. Inanother example, entity names may be used internally within the platformfor matching and data analysis purposes as described herein but theentity names and any entity identifying information (e.g. address,phone, and the like) may be required to be kept confidential. Anotherexample is that some fields of a restricted dataset may only be shown toan end user if it (or perhaps some distinct other fields) arecorroborated via a different data source also merged to the entity. Forexample an entity can be presented as a certified entity along with thename and address and certain other bits of information if the entity ismatched/corroborated by entity name and address with the name andaddress of an entity from a different dataset. Although the match neednot be exact, it must be sufficiently close to satisfy thematch/corroborate business rule associated with the restricted dataset.

As each new entity is detected, it is assigned an ID. This ID isbeneficially applied to link particular data records in the manydifferent data sources so that at any point in time, the data that hasbeen matched to the entity with a specific ID is known. Generally theassociation(s) between one or more IDs and a data record are stored in adatabase of pointers to records in the various datasets that may beorganized by the ID. In this way, each record that contributes to eachID is traceable. Because the data provided in the data sources is notcompletely static, (e.g. an updated version of the data source isprovided) updated versions of a data source must be analyzed todetermine if the matches that existed before the update are still valid.Matching activities based on updates of any of the many data sources mayimpact an entity profile and therefore change one or more key parametersassociated with an ID. This may result in some previous matches betweenrecords in an unchanged data set and the updated profiles beingdetermined to be invalid and the invalid matches are reassigned to adifferent ID. Likewise changes to profiles (e.g. resulting from matchingbased on an updated dataset) may result two entity profiles being mergedinto one updated entity profile and therefore the merged entity now hastwo IDs associated with it. As a result, the records that are currentlyassociated with either of the two existing IDs are combined under theupdated entity profile. Within this framework of shifting entityprofiles, updating records, and movement of record-entity associations,customers look for consistency in the resulting aggregated data andanalytics. Therefore persistence of associations must be supported toprovide consistency while maintaining accuracy across the data sets.Although IDs link records to entities, IDs may not be unique in relationto entities. It is possible (and common) for several ID's to point toone entity. This means that one entity can have several ID's. Thishappens when new information (or algorithmic improvements) allow adetermination that all or portions of two formerly distinct entities arein fact the same entity. For example ID X points to entity A and ID Ypoints to entity B and information changes allow us to determine entityA and B are the same and may be called entity AB for simplicity of thisexample. ID X and ID Y will now both be associated with entity AB inperpetuity to support existing customers. In addition a new ID XY willalso be assigned to entity AB to make facilitate tracking of new recordsthat match to entity AB. If entity AB is later split into two separateentities (e.g. determined to consist of data from multiple entities) IDX, Y, and XY will be used to track the largest number of records thatremain matched to one entity and new IDs will be assigned to the otherrecords. An extension of the ID use may be to keep an audit trail ofentity mergers and splits along with ID reassignments.

Persistence of relevant associations of data records to an existing IDis important for customer-level views. However, due to the dynamicnature of the data records and the matches of records with entities thatresult from new information that improves entity matching and overallmatch confidence levels, customer-level view persistence is handledcontextually. Contextual persistence handling may allow accurateassociations between records and entities while ensuring that changes toprofiles that result in changes to the matches of records to thoseprofiles maintains the greatest share of an existing customer view.Simply put, when records that are associated with one entity are splitamong two or more entities based on a change in the profile or in anunderstanding of the content of the records (match changes), the ID thatwas associates with all of the records maintains an association with thelargest newly matched group of records and different IDs are associatedwith the other records. In an example, splitting a matched set of tenrecords based on a new understanding of the entity profile to whichthese ten records are matched (entity T) may result in the profile forentity T being split into two profiles: entity T profile and entity T1profile. The ten records that were associated with profile T wereassociated through unique ID W. When the ten records are matched to thenew profiles, six records are determined to be matched with entity T 1.As a result, unique ID W is designated as now being associated withentity T1 rather than entity T because the majority of the existingmatches that are associated with ID W now match entity T1. Consequently,the updated profile for entity T and all of its matches will beassociated with a different ID.

In this way, although the platform can re-analyze any dataset and finddifferent results based on the additional entity information that hasbeen collected since the last time a dataset was analyzed, clients canbe provided a consistency in analysis output over time even while anassessment of the underlying data changes.

Industry or vertical classification may be accomplished by using dataassociated with a shipping record and/or other data sources to determinewhich industry an entity (buyer, supplier) is associated with. Asdescribed above, machine-learning techniques such as decision trees canbe used to classify individual data records.

The customs transaction data can be mined to automatically buildtraining data for vertical classification. Standardized codes such asthe Harmonic Tariff System (HTS) codes embedded in the free textcommodity fields can be extracted and used to determine a verticalassociated with a record. Along with the HTS code text in the commodityfield maybe mined to train a vertical classifier facility. The verticalclassifier facility can then be used to predict or determine a verticalclassification of customs records. In an example, a commodity field of arecord may be “HTS 6209180 Red cotton pants”. —The extracted HTS code6209180 may be determined to be associated with a garments industryvertical. The extracted label “red cotton pants” may be recognized asapparel in our training data. If “red cotton pants” is not recognized,then it can be added to the apparel training data. Generally only asmall fraction of customs data has HTS codes; therefore training aclassifier and applying the trained commodity entries to new records mayfacilitate classification of the remainder of the transaction record.Because the vertical classifier may be a self-learning facility, eachnew record processed by the classifier can enhance the verticalclassifier ability to classify new records. In addition, hand-labelingof records may be used to improve the vertical classifier training data.

In embodiments, a name updater may provide tools to clean the name of asupplier or buyer, such as making commas, periods, capitalization ofacronyms, fixing common misspellings, making common abbreviations, andthe like consistent. This may be an automated process of cleaning upthose names, as well as a manual interface to go through groups of namesby glancing at them.

FIG. 9 depicts a flow diagram for an overall analysis methodology forrating suppliers. Data may be collected 902, automatically 904 ormanually 908 from a variety of sources, such as customs data fromdatabases of United States customs transactions (or similar databasesfor other jurisdictions), sources of data regarding awards,certifications, and the like, databases of banking organizations, suchas the World Bank, databases of contact information (such as yellowpages, white pages and other business databases), data sources withbusiness registration information, such as containing information aboutformation of corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships andother entities, data sources with information about qualification to dobusiness in various jurisdictions, data sources relating to businesslicenses and other licensing activities, and data sources relating tovarious substantive characteristics of a business, such as Dunn andBradstreet data, data regarding corporate records, data with securitiesfilings and similar information, data from securities analysts, andvarious other sources. Such data may be brought into a data warehouse910, which may be a data mart or similar facility for handling data fromdisparate sources. Once brought into the warehouse 910, data may becleansed 912 by a variety of automatic cleaning 914 or manual cleaning918 processes, such as by automatically assigning a product category todata records associated with a supplier, based on pattern matching orsimilar techniques, such as machine learning techniques, as well asundertaking steps of anti-aliasing, assigning a caliber rating to thebuyer (such as associated with a transactional record), selecting ordeclaring a name for a buyer (such as when a record has names for morethan one party), and assigning a geographic region of shipping. Otherdata cleansing steps may be undertaken as would be understood by thosewith familiarity with data handling and manipulation. Once clean, cleandata 920 may be delivered to an analytics facility 922 for analysisaccording to various methods described throughout this disclosure,including population of modules for calculating, based on data from therecords derived from the data sources, the various ratings describedherein, including the overall ratings 110 and various component ratings.The analytics facility 922 may determine a country context, a degree ofproduct specialization, a measure of buyer loyalty, a buyer rating, orother rating. In the analytics facility ratings may be standardized,normalized or weighted, and an overall rating 110 may be calculated.Once normalized ratings 924 are generated by the analytics facility 922,ratings may be used to generate reports 928, such as an overallscorecard 200 with various constituent ratings as disclosed throughoutthis disclosure. Report generation 928 may also involve developing andpresenting percentile calculations, product categories, ratings, andcompany information.

Data Scraping

The data collection step 902 may include implementation of one or moretechnologies such as a data scraping technology to collect or retrievedata from one or more sources to analyze the data and determine ratingsfor the suppliers. The data scraping technology may implement one ormore applications that may be configured to operate on resources, suchas data stores, to identify data and/or data types. Once identified, thedata and/or data types may be reorganized, reclassified, manipulated,further stored, modified, and/or changed according to a selected datamodel/paradigm. For example, the data collection step 902 may implementdata scraping related technology to retrieve data from the web aboutcompanies that may supply goods and/or services to the buyers. The datamay include information such as contact information, product images,product information, third party ratings, and other meta-data such ascompany overviews, revenues or any other data corresponding to thesupplier, so that the analytics facility 922 may utilize thisinformation to establish ratings for the supplier.

The data scraping technology may include implementation of one or moredata scraping algorithms for data retrieval from the web to mine the webfor structured and unstructured data. Such types of data scrapingalgorithms may include taking scraped data from the web, comparing thescraped data to objective data taken from existing database contents,and determining a confidence in the scraped data using customs dataand/or other data sources. Similarly, the scraped data may also be usedto determine a confidence in other data sources and/or in associatingdata from transactions to an entity. For example, this technology may beused to determine whether a phone number or URL or email associated witha particular supplier is valid or not. Another exemplary use of thistechnology may include retrieving supplier data from a search enginesuch as a Google and determining confidence in the data using partnerdata sources. The search engine may maintain ‘supplier directory data’,which may be based on the web presence of certain suppliers (which maybe defined or populated at least in part by the scraped data source). Inembodiments, credit data may be taken from a third-party credit orcredit rating company. In addition, the scraped data may include theinformation that may be retrieved from various sources, such as websitesof suppliers, data from business to business (B2B) platforms, data fromthird party rating or credit agencies, data from other buyers orsuppliers, data from customers, data from government sources, data fromnon-governmental organizations, or any other similar platform. The datascraping technology may utilize this information to facilitateassociating ratings to the suppliers.

The data scraping technology may be configured to implement a webcrawler or spider application that may access the web to perform websearches based on already known data of suppliers and buyers. The webcrawler application may navigate through links (e.g. URLs) and fromwebpage to webpage until a significant portion of the set of availabledata about a supplier of interest, i.e., a supplier for whichinformation is sought, is found. In an example, a supplier of interestmay be determined by a manual search thereby identifying exemplary datathat can be used to indicate to the web crawler or spider which otherdata should be sought in the search.

In addition, the data scraping technology may be configured to includeone or more machine learning algorithms configured to identifyinformation such as phone numbers, emails, addresses, or any otherinformation. The scraping technology may also use machine learning toestablish a map between elements of a (web) page and various types ofdata to facilitate identifying elements of the web page andcorresponding data associated therewith. Machine learning may include aninitial seeding of data for which a web scraping technology is maysearch, as well as feedback, such as from a manual or automated review,that indicates the extent to which initial rounds of searching havesucceeded in finding relevant items. The success in each round ofsearching may be indicated to the learning system, which may modify thesearches iteratively in successive rounds until searches consistentlyproduce better and better results. Further, the data scraping technologymay be configured to include mapping related features that may includecreation of maps to describe how data is laid out onbusiness-to-business (B2B) pages. Accordingly, the web pages may becrawled to collect buyer and/or supplier information using the maps.

The data scraping technology may include an update feature to introduceinformation associated with new companies that may not be listed (or maynot yet be fully identified) in an existing company database. The updatefeature may identify the web sites associated with the new companies orsuppliers and navigate through each website's site map to determine anextended site map that may include identification of key data elements,such as addresses, and the like.

To facilitate improvements in web scraping efficiency, a server maystore information regarding scrap/web crawl status of websites. To makeuse of this information, when a website is encountered during a webcrawl, communication with a server may be established to determine ifthe encountered website has already been accessed. If the website hasalready been accessed, the server may respond with a site and linksassociated therewith.

The data scraping technology may further include a merging andde-duplication feature that may be used in combination with the updatefeature. The merging and de-duplication feature may include searchingfor a company on multiple data sources, extracting data from a portionof those sources, and merging the extracted data together into oneprofile. Merging and deduplication may include data extraction fromunstructured or structured data sources. In addition, merging andde-duplication may include employing various techniques for identifyingdata corresponding to a single entity from two or more of the disparatedata sources so that the data can be merged into a single or commonrecord for the supplier. Merging and duplication may further includesrules, such as conditional logic, for indicating a preferred source whentwo sources partially overlap, such that a best merged record may becreated from two similar, but not identical sources. For example, if onesource includes ZIP+5 zip codes, and the source is a reliable governmentaddress database, for example, the zip codes from such a source might beused in lieu of shorter form zip codes found from another source, wherethe rest of the address for a supplier is consistent in both thegovernment source and the other source. Other examples of such mergingwill be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art.

Unstructured Web Data Objects for Updating a Marketplace Profile

FIG. 10A illustrates an exemplary embodiment of use of structured datafrom a website corresponding to a buyer and/or supplier to update anexisting record of a buyer and/or supplier. Existing data from a websitemay include links to sites, addresses, phone numbers, emails, websites,and the like. As illustrated in FIG. 10A, data from an existing recordmay include a partial profile of a supplier comprising a supplier name(smooth gears) and a region (Canada). This partial profile informationmay be used to guide a web crawler to look for a website of the supplier(smoothgears.ca). The data scraping technologies may analyze thesmoothgears.ca website and detect a link 10-102 to a smooth gearslocations (/sites). By following this link, the data scraping techniquesdescribed herein may detect one or more addresses and other profileinformation that is missing from the smooth gears partial profile. Eachstructured element in the website page might be converted into an objectcorresponding to the information so that it may be merged into theexisting smooth gears profile. In the example of FIG. 10A objects may becreated for an address 10-104, a phone number 10-108, an email address10-110, and a website 10-112. Each object may be merged with theexisting smooth gears supplier profile record based on comparinginformation about the object with data field definitions. In an example,address object 10-104 indicates a location in the U.S. (Cedar RapidsMich.) so the data merging capabilities described herein map thisaddress object 10-104 to the U.S. address field in the supplier profilerecord.

For structured crawling, the methods and systems described herein mayinclude searching details within a website based on an expectedstructure of the website information. The structured information mayinclude phone, email, fax, snail mail, English language descriptions,industry, export markets, product images, product descriptioninformation, and the like. This structured information may be used toestablish relevant information for one or more suppliers so that anybuyer can access this information to deal directly with the supplier.

To address the reality that there may be a number of conflicting or atleast incompatible occurrences of entity information found in a webcrawling/scraping exercise. Therefore, one approach to determining alikely correct occurrence of entity information is to count the numberof each unique occurrence, thereby creating a vote tally for each. Anoccurrence with the highest vote tally may be selected as representingthe correct, or definitive data. For example, if there are two votes forthe US and one vote for Canada as a location of the supplier, the USlocation will be selected as the location of the supplier. Similarly,the process can be repeated for identifying a state for the supplier.Alternatively, selecting an occurrence based on voting ballot resultsmay guide additional automatic selection (e.g. if a state is selected byvoting, then only cities within the selected stated can be candidatesfor selection). This is called a cascade feature and it may provide anenhanced process for identifying a reliable company address. Voting maybe weighted, such as to provide more vote for sources that havehistorically been considered reliable sources, but allowing for suchsources to be “outvoted” if multiple other sources provide differinginformation. A wide range of voting schemes, including weighted schemes,schemes using rounds of voting, and the like may be used as understoodby those of skill in the art of voting methods.

The methods and systems described herein may facilitate determining anexistence of a relationship between two companies (e.g., between a buyerand a supplier) by reviewing website for company names other than thename of the site owner. For example, in a website owned by companyAlpha, the phrase “We are one of the leading suppliers to Poland Cider”may be stated. The existence of the name “Poland Cider” on the Alphawebsite may indicate that the two companies have a buyer/supplierrelationship. The related company name may be checked against arelationship database to confirm a real relationship between the twocompanies.

Weights may be applied to rating algorithms, data, and the like in themethods and systems disclosed herein. Weights may be applied in theprocess of determining ratings so that certain factors that affect arating may have a greater impact on a rating than other factors. Weightsmay also be variable and may be based on a combination of factors.Weights may be applied based on a timeliness of data. Timeliness of datamay be important to be weighted because, for instance, very new data maynot yet be verified or old data may no longer represent a buyer-supplierrelationship. Weighting of data may also be important because some datamay be of suspect quality independent of age, data may not have a highdegree of relevance to a rating, and many other data quality relatedfactors. In this way, weights may be given in the rating process basedon timeliness of data, size of transaction, quality of the transactingparties, prior rating of a transacting party or entity, relevance of thedata. Weighting factors may be based on human-aided assessment of anentity, financial health of an entity, and the like.

An overall rating 110 of a supplier or buyer may be a combination ofsub-ratings such as rating associated with amount of experience,certification dimensions, county context, business metrics, customerloyalty, and the like. An overall rating 110 and any sub-rating may beweighted, normalized, and curve fitted to ensure the rating is providinga consistent reliable measure of a supplier, buyer, and the like.Additionally, the weighting may be customer specified to enable acustomer to identify portions of the ratings that are most important.

One sub-rating metric is customer loyalty. Determining a customerloyalty rating for a supplier is computationally intense andalgorithmically rich because it measures how well a supplier is atkeeping customers, or how well a buyer sticks with a supplier. In someindustries, such as in apparel, it is quite common for buyers to changealmost half of their suppliers every year. Understanding the factorsthat determine how this activity impacts customer loyalty is a keybenefit of the present invention.

Customer loyalty may be determined by looking at individualbuyer-supplier pairs. One technique to determine a customer loyaltyrating for a supplier is to determine a customer loyalty rating for eachbuyer (customer) of that supplier and then combine the individualratings. Factors that may impact customer loyalty include, a buyerbuying pattern, buying frequency, number of purchases, time since firstpurchase, and the like. Each transaction can be analyzed to determine ifthe buyer is buying from a second supplier and if the purchase is for anitem that was previously purchased from a first supplier. In thissituation, customer loyalty of the first supplier is compromised.However, simply measuring transactions may not provide a quality measureof customer loyalty. Factors such as if the first supplier has stoppedselling the item that the buyer is now buying from the second supplierare important to include.

Transaction data may often only be available as free text data (UPC andother codes may not be included in the records). Therefore the textprocessing, normalization, and canonical adaptation techniques describedherein may be beneficially applied to determining a customer loyaltyrating for a supplier. Certain aspects of buyer-supplier relationshipsmay have greater importance than others so exponential weighting on somedimensions may be useful. In an example, a longer relationship of fewertransactions may be more important than a large number of transactionsover a shorter duration. Factors included in a customer loyaltycalculation include duration of relationship, count of orders/shipments,the weight of each order/shipment (determines size/value of shipment),and the like. In an example if a buyer buys the same item from twosuppliers and consolidates orders to just one of the two suppliers, acustomer loyalty rating of the other supplier may be significantlyimpacted because of the known cutoff in the supplier-buyer relationship.

For merging records, determining an overall rating 110, and otheractivities and results associated with the platform, determiningparent-subsidiary relationships may be important. In addition toparent-subsidiary relationships, other relationships may be important indetermining overall rating 110, customer loyalty rating, and the like. Abuyer that switches from one subsidiary to another subsidiary under asingle parent may have little impact on the parent rating, but may havesignificant impact on the subsidiary rating.

An aspect of the platform that facilitates determining parent-subsidiaryrelationships may use various sources of information such as businessrecords from Dunn and Bradstreet, web news feeds, search engine resultsof business news sites, crawling of supplier web sites, press releasesof suppliers, and the like. An acquisition of a subsidiary by a parentmay be identified through one or more of these data sources and theparent-subsidiary relationship may be factored into overall rating,customer loyalty rating, merging, and the like. Parent-subsidiaryrelationships may also be determined based on predetermined heuristicssuch as same city—similar name, same buyer—similar name, and otherheuristic combinations of customs data record elements.Parent-subsidiary relationships can be determined for suppliers and forbuyers.

In an embodiment, details of a supplier may be summarized and coupled ifthe same supplier has several plants to generate an aggregate profile ofthe supplier. Likewise, if a single buyer buys for several locations itmay be considered to be a single buyer and an aggregate profile for thebuyer may be generated. For example, a supplier of “wooden furniture”with 5 different distribution locations may be considered as a singlesupplier. Over a period of time, trends between a supplier and a buyermay be captured and such trends may enable an analysis of buyer-suppliernetworks (supplier location and buyer location) to determine therelationships between various groups of buyers and suppliers. Dependingupon the transactions made between a supplier and buyer for severallocations a map of relationships among the locations of the suppliersand the locations of the buyers may be developed. In case a buyer and asupplier are constantly engaged with each other through variouslocations, supply and delivery points may be identified on maps, whichmay be helpful in developing a well managed relationship between boththe entities. The relationship map among the various locations of thesupplier and the buyer is pivotal for efficient management of a supplychain. The managers might be assisted by this map to manage thelogistics that in turn may help in minimizing the freight costs, time ofdelivery, etc. The mapping of various buyer-supplier locations on themap may also help in building a partnership between a buyer and asupplier, which may increase a firm's competitiveness. Moreover, thismapping may also play an important role in reducing the cycle time;specifically, the “order-to-delivery lead time”, which is the time,elapsed between the placement of order by the buyer and the delivery ofproducts by the supplier. For example, a supplier of electroniccomponents providing a buyer with various products at differentlocations may be able to map the various factories producing thosecomponents. Accordingly, he may be able to plan a strategy for managingthe supply of those components to the point of delivery in accordancewith the distance from the various factories. This may help theelectronic component supplier to deliver the components within less timeand at a better cost. These maps may also help a buyer to find othersuppliers that may be near one of the buyer's locations. The othersuppliers may be able to serve the needs of the buyer while also beingmore cost effective. Further, the relationship map may be used by thegeographic search functionality, as described above, to track/searchvarious locations of the suppliers and the buyers. For example, by usingthe geographic searching functionality, the buyer may further minimizethe cost of purchase by searching for a supplier who is nearest to thepoint of delivery or may be a competitor of the current supplier in thevicinity.

Information derived from the location specific data described above maybe valuable to a supplier or buyer so this information may be madeavailable for a fee (e.g. a subscription fee, a one-time-use fee, andthe like). A supplier may pay a fee to reduce shipment and/or inventoryhandling costs. A buyer may pay a fee to receive information that mightreduce purchase or shipping related costs.

Using such relationship maps, a cohort relationship dataset may bedeveloped which may enable statistical study of relationships betweensupplier locations and a buyer locations. If a supplier ships the sameproduct from a few different locations and a particular supplierlocation of that product is rated more highly than other locations, abuyer may use the information in business dealings with the supplier.

FIG. 10 depicts fields that are derived from customs data associatedwith supply transactions. The records depicted in FIG. 10 may comprise aportion of a buyer record of customs data 1000. Note that informationthat may be associated with a buyer's identity may reside in variousfields. FIG. 10 further illustrates fields from customs records 1002. Abuyer record of customs data 1000 may include, without limitation,fields such as shipper 1004A, consignee 1004B, notify_party 1004C,also_notify 1004D, weight 1004E, quantity 1004F, BL number 1004G,country 1004H, data 10041, commodity 1004J, and HS code 1004K. Certainfields may facilitate identification of possible buyers based oninformation contained one or more fields; these fields may be referredto as buyer identity candidate fields 1008. In an example, one way ofidentifying a buyer may be by using the consignee 1004B. In anotherexample, notify_party 1004C may be used to identify the buyer. In yetanother example, also_notify 1004D may be used to identify the buyer.The buyer identity candidate fields 1008 may be combined in various waysto facilitate identifying a buyer.

Referring to FIG. 11 depicts a plurality of customs records with detailsthat are relevant to buyer and supplier identification and for mergingcustoms records while avoiding duplication in counting the sametransaction as a result of it being characterized in different records.Records 1102 and 1104 record the same Shipper 1004A “Shanghai BadaTextile”, Consignee 1004B “No Fear Inc.”, and HS Code 1004K “621143”.However the date 10041 is different for each record indicating thatwhile the records may be associated with the same buyer and supplierthey are not duplicate entries. Record 1108 records the same shipper1004A as records 1102 and 1104. It also records a buyer that may be thesame as the buyer of records 1102 and 1104 through the data in thealso_notify 1004D field “No Fear”. Therefore, it may be appropriate toconclude that the buyer and seller of record 1108 is the same as thosein records 1102 and 1104. However, because the HS code 1004K “621149” isnot the same, record 1108 is not a duplicate of 1102 or 1104. Record1110 records a potential buyer in consignee 1004B “No Fear” that may bethe same as the buyer in records 1102, 1104, and 1108. However, becausethe shipper 1004A “Guangzhou Textile Co” may be identified as adifferent supplier than the shipper in records 1108, 1104, and 1108, itmay be readily determined that record 1110 is not only not a duplicateof 1102, 1104, and 1108, but it also identifies a differentsupplier-buyer relationship.

Referring to FIG. 12, a customs data user interface 1204 that mayfacilitate selecting among a plurality of potential buyer names that areprovided in customs records 1202. The interface 1204 may include one ormore buyer name use buttons 1208 or some other type of selection meansfor selecting which field in each of the customs records 1202 representsa buyer name. As described in reference to FIG. 10, buyer identitycandidate fields 1008 may include consignee 1004B, the notify_party1004C, and the also_notify 1004D fields. The buyer name use buttons 1208may be associated with each field in the buyer identity candidate fields1008 so that an operator of the platform may signal which buyer identitydata item associated with each customs record 1202 should be used formerging, de-duplication, and other actions within the platform. Thecustoms data user interface 1204 is only exemplary and otherarrangements of buttons, data fields, and the like, as well as variouspresentations of the data before and after selection are possible andherein included.

A name chooser tool, such as the one described above and depicted inFIG. 12 may assist with identifying a buyer name or supplier name in arecord. The tool may allow a user to manually identify a buyer, seller,shipper, and the like for each transaction records. As described herein,there may be automated processes to deal with entity identification intransaction records. Automated or manual processes use key words like“logistics,” “trading company,” and “shipping company” to distinguishshippers from buyers or suppliers.

The user data interface 1204 may include a toolbar that may becustomized according to a user's need. This customized toolbar mayprovide a personalized experience to each user. For example, the usermay introduce new check buttons for products which help in filtering theresults in accordance with the products provided by various suppliers.Similarly, the user may introduce various buttons to customize a search.The user may also use various elements from the list of favorites markedby the user during his previous searches. Elements present in the listmay be grabbed and dragged to the screen by the user such that theseelements may be used during the subsequent searches. Similarly,suggestions may also be made for similar suppliers and a real time matchmay also be found for them.

In an embodiment, a tool may be provided that allows data to be viewedas a table or to be exported to another application such as MS Excel. Atable view may display specific details of a particular company or acombination of companies (e.g. buyers and suppliers). The table view mayfacilitate viewing information pertaining to a company such as variousattributes including without limitation, a supplier's shipment history,the types of materials typically shipped, a supplier's customers, asupplier's expertise, what materials and how much a buyer purchases,buyer and shipper reliability, similarity between buyers, similaritybetween suppliers, shipments that match a particular term, and the like.The data table view may be viewed or exported conveniently by manualclicking a link command icon in a user interface.

Relationships among companies may be viewed in the table view based on afilter of company specific attributes, (e.g. for a given product). Forexample, filtering of companies may be done on the basis of the numberof shipments matching a product, such as “hammers.” This filtering mayallow presentation in a table view a number of companies that share thesame number of shipments and receipts of “hammers” over a defined periodof time, thereby showing a supplier or suppliers and a buyer or buyerswho have transacted “Hammers”. The companies in the results of thisinitial filtering may be further compared by providing a compare button(e.g. in a user interface that supports the table view) which may beclicked to compare a selected subset of results. Alternatively draggingone or more of the entities in the results list to a comparison regionor icon of a data view user interface may activate the comparison. Atoolbar may be provided such that after clicking the compare button thetoolbar folds up. For example, a user may select elements forcomparison, such as a group of entities and a term (e.g. “Hammers”), anda compare function may provide a tabular view of the comparison ofsuppliers that meet the selected comparison criteria, in accordance withthe above description.

The methods and systems described herein may include user interfacesthat may include support for various languages and may further include amulti-language user communication system. A multi-language usercommunication system may, for example use location information topresent information to the user in the user's native language, even ifthe information was entered in a different language. In addition thelook and feel of the user interface presented to a user may differ basedon user current location, user home location, user language preference,and the like. The language and design elements may be changed dependingon these and other aspects of a user's location.

The multi-language user communication system may provide a translationfacility that may allow a supplier and a buyer without a common languageto communicate. Translation services may be real-time or may be delayedfor processing. The translation may be automatically generated, or maybe manually provided through the use of interpreters. A different levelof service, with a different degree of accuracy guarantee may beprovided on a fee basis. (I included this elsewhere) The multi-languageuser communication system may provide a method for communicating with ashipping company in a user's native language.

Referring to FIG. 13, a GUI 1300 depicting configuring mergingparameters to guide automatic merging of variations in buyer name isshown. An option button 1302 allows selection of the consignee 1004B. Inaddition, the variation to the consignee 1004B may be listed below theoption button along with check box 1304A enabling selection of one ormore variations to the consignee names 1004B. Another set of check boxes1304B listing the different variations to the consignee names 1004B maybe provided on the right side of the GUI. Selection of the option button1302, the check box 1304A and the check box 1304B may facilitate mergingof supplier names on initialization. In an example, the option buttoncorresponding to No Fear Inc. may be selected along with the check boxshowing No Fear Inc. Subsequently, the variation in the names of thebuyer can be merged.

Referring to FIG. 14, a GUI 1400 depicting configuring mergingparameters to guide automatic merging of variations in supplier name isshown. An option button 1402 allows selection of the consignee 1004B. Inaddition, the variation to the consignee 1004B may be listed below theoption button along with check boxes 1404A enabling selection of one ormore variations to the consignee names 1004B. Another set of check boxes1404B listing the different variations to the consignee names 1004B maybe provided on the right side of the GUI. Selection of the option button1402, the check box 1404A and the check box 1404B may facilitate mergingof supplier names on initialization. In an example, the option buttoncorresponding to Shanghai Bada Textile may be selected along with thecheck box showing Shanghai Bada Textile Co. Subsequently, the variationin the names of the buyer can be merged.

FIG. 15 depicts identifying factors relevant to assessing buyer loyaltyfrom transaction records. After a series of transactions 1502, 1504,1508 with one supplier, a subsequent transaction 1510 indicates that thebuyer may have switched to another supplier for a similar product. Thus,an initial loyalty period represented by transaction 1502, 1504, and1508 can be calculated, the duration of which may be the time betweenthe first order 1502 and the last order 1508 of a product from thesupplier. A switch to another supplier may terminate the loyalty period.Also the switch itself may be considered one indicator of the quality ofthe suppliers (in particular suggesting higher quality for the newsupplier and lower quality for the old supplier). In an embodiment, anegative factor may be attributed in rating the former supplier as aresult of the switch, which may balance, or even outweigh, the positivefactor associated with the previous loyalty period.

FIG. 16 depicts using transaction data that may be indicative of asupplier's degree of specialization. Customs data 1602 may include an HSCode field 1004K that may provide an indication of supplierspecialization by looking at the range of values in the HS Code field1004K for transactions records associated with a specific supplier. Alarger number of categories may suggest less specialization, while asmaller number of categories suggest more specialization.

FIG. 17 depicts steps for obtaining data indicative of a supplier'sdegree of experience. A number of units shipped, a number of orders, anda duration over which products are shipped may be factors in determiningan experience rating. Data from individual customs transaction records1702 may be aggregated and processed to determine experience factors. Inan example from FIG. 17, a duration factor of expertise may becalculated by determining the number of days between the first shipment(Jan. 2, 2005) and the last or current shipment (Mar. 8, 2005).Expertise may be in terms of how much of each product type a supplierhas shipped, such that users may better determine what suppliers havetheir greatest experience, their least experience, and the like.

FIG. 18 depicts customs data record fields 1802 that may affect asupplier's rating based on the quality of the buyers served by thesupplier. A buyer may be identified in the customs data record fields1802 through the consignee 1004B field, the also notify 1004D field, ora combination thereof. A caliber of the identified buyer may bedetermined manually, such as by a facilitator, or by an algorithm basedon various attributes, such as size of business, number of employees,presence on a stock market, profitability, knowledge of brand amongcustomers, surveys or ratings by third parties, awards, certifications,or a range of other measures. The caliber may be stored by the platformin association with other information about the buyer. Alternatively,the caliber may be calculated from stored and retrieved information asdescribed above. The platform may calculate the caliber, a portion ofthe caliber, or may be provided with the caliber through an interface,such as a network interface.

FIG. 19 depicts a portion of a summary report 1900 showing top suppliersincluding rating 1904 of the supplier, name of the supplier 1908,supplier's location 1910 and reference details 1912. The summary may befor an industry or product category, such as women's apparel (e.g.blouses, skirts, dresses and the like). In one embodiment, a company maygive an overall rating 110 within a given category of suppliers for oneof the products, i.e., women's blouses. Further, the top suppliers ofthis category (such as the top 50 suppliers) may be listed even thoughless than 50 suppliers are shown in the embodiment of FIG. 19. Thereport 1900 may include a greater or lesser number of top suppliers.Also the report 1900 may include an executive summary portion thatprovides guidance using the summary. The ratings 1904 may be accorded tothe suppliers based on a plurality of factors such as timely supply,quality, pricing of the product and the like. Each rating 1904 may bescaled on a normalized scale, such as a one hundred point scale, withparticular ratings depicted graphically, such as in a bar graph, to makeit easier to see the relative performance of the supplier in thatcategory of rating. The ratings 1904 may also be depicted as qualitativelabels such as “Excellent”, “Good”, “Fair”, and the like. The supplierinformation, in context of the overall rating, may be provided in one ormore sections of the detailed report.

FIG. 20 depicts a report 2000 showing standout suppliers (e.g. for aparticular product), including suppliers with the highest customerloyalty and suppliers with the deepest experience in shipping to thebuyer's jurisdiction. The stand-out supplier report 2000 may include atable 2002A of top suppliers with the highest customer loyalty, and aseparate table of most experienced shippers 2002B. Each table 2002A and2002B may include a plurality of columns related to the supplier'sinformation; in an example, loyalty rating 2004A, experience rating,2004B supplier name 2008, location 2010, and details 2012 of thesupplier. In the present illustration, table 2002A may include the topfive suppliers that have the best customer loyalty. Table 2002B may listthe top suppliers with the most experience in shipping to the U.S. Inthe present illustration, a list is provided for top four suppliers thatmay have the maximum experience in shipping with their correspondingcustomers in the United States.

FIG. 21 shows an exemplary detailed report 2100 that breaks down theoverall rating 110 according to various dimensions of quality. In theexample detailed report 2100, dimensions of quality may be grouped intoperformance aspects 2102 such as track record that may include customerloyalty, amount of experience and the like; certifications 2104 that mayinclude quality management, social responsibility, and environmentalresponsibility; and business basics 2108 that may include businesslegitimacy and country context. Each rating may be scaled on anormalized scale, such as a one hundred point scale 2110, withparticular ratings depicted graphically, such as in a bar graph 2112, tomake it easier to compare the supplier performance in each dimension toeach other dimension. ratings may alternatively be depicted asqualitative labels such as “Excellent”, “Good”, “Fair”, and the like.

FIG. 22 a breakdown of supplier transaction experience for a selectedtime period, which may allow prospective buyers to draw inferences as towhat areas of experience are deepest for the supplier. The breakdown mayinclude product expertise 2202 of the supplier, technical expertise 2208of the supplier, and material expertise 2204 of the supplier. Theproduct expertise 2202 may further include the percentage distributionfor a number of products; in an example, shirts and blouses, gloves,skirts, and the like. The technical expertise 2208 may include thepercentage distribution of the technology applied and used by thesupplier; in an example, non knitting and knitting of the material. Thematerial expertise 2204 may include the percentage distribution of thematerial used for the synthesis of a plurality of products; in anexample, silk, cotton, etc.

FIG. 23 shows a report 2300 presenting a breakdown of suppliertransaction experience according to selected factors, including a genderchart 2300A, and a customer caliber chart 2300B. These charts may bebased on a variety of supply factors including product, material,technique, shipment history, estimated minimum shipment size, averageshipment size, and the like. Report 2300 may allow the buyer to assesswhether and to what extent the supplier is likely to have expertiseapplicable to the buyer's requirement.

FIG. 24 and FIG. 25 show a breakdown of supplier shipment history, whereshipment history may be broken down by piece count, by month, by monthto a certain country, and the like. FIG. 24 depicts a breakdown ofshipment history as a piece-count chart 2400. FIG. 25 breaks downshipment history into a monthly article chart 2502A and a monthlyshipment count chart 2502B. In embodiments, the product may includeshipment history graphs that show trends and volumes of shipments(quantified in terms of shipping containers) made over some period oftime. Embodiments may also show the number of articles, garments,pieces, or, generally, entities, of the shipped product shipped overtime based on algorithms that take into account the weight of thecontainer and the assumed weight of each individual entities inside thecontainer. Embodiments may also include a characterization of how largea supplier's shipments tend to be in terms of number of entities pershipping container. Such a characterization may allow a furthercharacterization of whether a supplier may be able to fulfill smallorders, if they will be willing to fulfill large orders, and the like.Embodiments may also include estimates of a supplier's monthly capacityand their smallest shipment size.

FIG. 26 shows a user interface through which users may search forsuppliers. The supplier search interface 2602 may allow a user to searchfor suppliers based on category 2608A, name 2608B, and country 2608C. InFIG. 26, a user has selected to search for a supplier based on thesupplier's country 2608C. A user may enter text in the text entry box2610 that may be useful in determining a country and then the user mayselect search control 2604 to search for suppliers within a country thatmay be determined from the text input into box 2610.

Referring to FIG. 27, the search may also be conducted to obtaininformation regarding the various entities 2708 such as suppliers 2732and buyers 2730. The computer implemented facility 2702 may collect andstore a plurality of public records of transactions 2704 among aplurality of buyers 2730 and suppliers 2732. The transactions 2704 maybe aggregated and associated with the entities 2708 (suppliers and/orbuyers). A user interface 2722 may be provided that may facilitate auser who may be searching for at least one of the entities 2708 and theinformation associated with the at least one of the entities 2708 fromthe aggregated transactions data. The user may be any person interestedin retrieving the above information; the user may also be a supplier, abuyer, a third party, and the like. The examples of user interface 2722may include a Graphical User Interface, Web-based User Interface, TouchInterface, and some other types of user interfaces.

In an embodiment, the user interface 2722 may facilitate a tuple-basedsearch 2748. The tuple-based search 2748 relates to a capability ofsearching for entities 2708 related to a specific parameter. Suchparameter may relate to a product 2750, a material 2752, and/or atechnique 2754. In an example, a supplier S1 may like to conduct asearch for buyers available in the United States for ‘Aluminum basedpackaging sheets formed by extrusion.’

In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, the searchresults obtained from the above described searches for the entities 2708may also be ranked. In an embodiment, the ranking may be based on asupplier rating. In an embodiment, the supplier rating may be based onthe context of a party, the business legitimacy of a party, anassessment based on the trading environment of a country, macroeconomicinformation, industry awards, industry certifications, amount ofexperience, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of domestic experience, extent of internationalexperience, caliber of customers, customer loyalty, degree ofspecialization, specialization in product categories, specialization inmanufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specialization ingender, feedback from customers, feedback from buyers, feedback onproduct quality, feedback on customer service, feedback on timeliness ofdelivery, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, standards of compliance,certifications, certifications with respect to specific vendorstandards, risk profile 2758, opportunity profile 2760, and some othertypes of factors and parameters.

Search ranking may be done using a ranking or relevance algorithm thatfunctions more than merely matching buyers to suppliers who have hadlarge quantities of similar shipments in the past. In embodiments, theranking algorithm may include logarithmically weighting the sum of anumber of different factors that may be relevant to a supplier's pastand potential future performance, as well as matching a buyer's needs.Such logarithmic weighting may determine the relevance of a particularresult and may eliminate biases associated with suppliers who havecompleted substantially more transactions. The relevance of results maythen be ranked and displayed to a buyer searching for a potentialsupplier. Such a logarithmic weighing may be akin to many searchengines' page rank functionality. Factors for the search rankingalgorithm may include, among other things, the number of shipments madeby the supplier that matches at least one aspect of a buyer's request(e.g. product type, such as sweaters). Additionally, the search rankingalgorithm may account for the number of similar products a givensupplier makes that match the buyer's request (e.g. quantity of sweatersacross all types of sweaters offered by the supplier). Such informationmay be derived from searching public sources of information, such asusing a web crawler to index various supplier products, accessingshipping records captured by the methods and systems described herein(e.g. customs records), or other methods for gathering entity-specificdata described herein or known in the art. The information about asupplier's products may also be extracted from a supplier's marketplaceplatform profile or past marketplace platform transactions, both ofwhich are described elsewhere herein. Additional search ranking factorsmay be derived from customs data of a particular supplier. One suchfactor may include determining an export value per product categorylevel according to a Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System(HS). For example, if a user searches for sweaters from a Chinesesupplier, the search ranking algorithm may associate the request forsweaters to the appropriate HS category code in order to determine thedollar value of the number of sweaters Chinese companies have exportedwithin a certain time frame. The dollar value of the products exportedis then accounted for by the search ranking. The higher the dollarvalue, the more likely that a particular supplier would be a good matchfor the user looking to order sweaters; thus, the particular Chinesecompany would be ranked higher than others. The search ranking may alsoaccount for the number of certifications or clearances that a particularsupplier has. Further, the search ranking algorithm may include acontact convenience factor. In an example, this factor may be determinedby assessing how likely a user is to get in touch with the particularparty in the search result. The contact convenience of a party may beseen by analyzing whether a particular party has contact informationavailable to the marketplace platform or how easily such contactinformation could be obtained. The latter may be determined using thesame crawling techniques to identify whether contact information isavailable publicly. Additionally, the contact convenience of aparticipant may be determined by a participant's past activity withinthe marketplace platform. Previous responses to initial inquiriesbefore, during, or after a transaction may all be factored into thecontact convenience of a particular supplier. These various factors canbe summarized, for example, by using a weighted sum of the logarithms ofthe factors, where both the weights and the bases of the logarithms aretuned to ensure the best results for the user. The weights and logarithmbases can also be tuned on a user-by-user basis to take into accountindividual user preferences. These user-specific preferences can beeither manually entered or learned by the system over time

Referring to the above example again, upon searching, a supplier 2732may obtain a list of buyers 2730, which may be interested in buying‘Aluminum based packaging sheets formed by extrusion’. In addition, thesupplier may like to ascertain the best buyers. For this purpose, thesupplier 2732 may also obtain a ranking of the buyers 2730 based onselected parameters such as feedback reports, risk associated with eachbuyer, geographical location, and some other type of parameter. Therating may be in the form of a value, integer, percentage, and someother forms of ratings. Based on this rating, a ranking may be providedto each of the buyers 2730. This ranking may in turn facilitate thesupplier 2732 in making the judgment regarding the appropriate buyer.Risk may be related to counterfeiting, capacity, subcontracting,political factor, geographic factor, weather factor, geology factor,financial risk, probability of non-performance of a contract,probability of termination of a contract, intellectual property,targeted delivery date, transactional customs data for a party otherthan the supplier and/or buyer, likelihood that a buyer will move to analternative supplier, non-payment and some other types of risk factors.

An opportunity profile 2760 may be an assessment of the potential fornew business opportunities determined from customs transaction data. Byanalyzing transactions in customs data, buyers and suppliers canidentify potential business opportunities such as to establish a newrelationship, reduce costs, increase availability, and the like. Whilecompanies guard much of their internal information related to costs andprofit, the transaction information available in public customs recordscan provide great insight into ongoing buy and sell activity. In anexample of opportunity profile 2760 assessment, a buyer may decide thereis an opportunity to push a supplier harder to reduce a price. The buyermay be able to determine that the supplier has made fewer sales (e.g. asevidenced by lower shipment quantities in customs transaction records)over time. One potential reason for this is that a competitor of thesupplier is offering a lower price. Therefore the supplier may need toreduce price to remain competitive. Likewise the supplier can review thesame records and determine that the competitor is selling at a lowerprice under certain conditions, so the supplier can device a counterpricing strategy accordingly. In another example, a supplier may spot anopportunity to sell additional types of products to an existing buyer byexamining the transactions of the buyer. The supplier may determine thatthe buyer is purchasing a type of product from a competitor that thesupplier also offers but is not currently selling to the buyer. Thesupplier could provide the buyer with the opportunity to potentiallyimprove the buyer costs by ordering the product from the supplier ratherthan the competitor. Factors such as combined volume pricing, reducedaccounting overhead, lower shipping costs and the like may be keybenefits that the supplier can use to entice the buyer.

Likewise the platform or an operator of the platform may use the customstransactional data to identify and suggest opportunities to buyersand/or suppliers. The transactional data may be analyzed for factorsthat indicate the potential for an opportunity and the opportunity maybe prepared as an offer to one or more of buyers, suppliers, and thelike. Opportunities may include availability of pricing leverage for abuyer with respect to a supplier; consolidation of orders with asupplier, pricing leverage for a supplier with respect to a buyer,increasing a share of a buyer's total spending for a supplier, and thelike.

A risk profile 2758 may be determined based on analysis of customstransaction data. A risk profile for a supplier or a buyer may be basedon customs transaction data for the supplier, the buyer, or a thirdparty. A risk profile that may be determined from customs transactionaldata may include risk related to counterfeiting, capacity overload,subcontracting, political factors, geographic factors, weather, geology,finances, probability of non-performance to a contract, probability oftermination of a contract, intellectual property, achieving a targeteddelivery date, non-payment, selecting an alternate supplier, ordercancellation, order push-out, and the like. A risk profile that may bederived from customs transaction data may be a basis for determiningterms and conditions of insurance, and the like.

The above description disclosed that the search interface may beutilized for searching entities 2708 based on the aggregatedtransactional data. In an embodiment, the suppliers 2732 may also besearched based on the region of interest (geography) 2738, industryspecialization 2740, customers (entity types) 2742, and the interestdisplayed in forming relationship (likelihood of interest) 2744. Thismay be explained in detail in conjunction with FIG. 27.

Referring to FIG. 27 again, the computer implemented facility 2702 maycollect and store the public transaction records 2704 and associatethese transactions with the entities 2708. A search facility 2720 maysearch for an entity based on a particular search attribute 2734. Thesearch attribute 2734 may be a type of entity 2742, geographic region2738, industry specialization 2740, and likelihood of interest in atransaction with the user or the search 2744.

In embodiments, the search facility 2720 may be adapted to be used by abuyer for searching a supplier. Alternately, the search facility mayalso be adapted to be used by a supplier for searching a buyer.

In an example, a buyer 2730 may like to search for suppliers (in US) of‘automotive machine parts’ that may be willing to do business with asmall offshore firm outside United States. Therefore, in the abovescenario the likelihood of interest that the suppliers may display maybe based on the location and size of the firm.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may include aninterface by which buyers may search for suppliers, as disclosed above.The search interface may allow buyers to query a database of supplierinformation organized in a hierarchy according to product categories, inorder to find suppliers who provide products in a selected category. Abuyer may then select particular suppliers and obtain an online profileor report, as described throughout this disclosure, as to attributes ofa particular supplier. In embodiments, the search interface allows thebuyer to search by product category, material used to make the product,or technique used to make the product, among other attributes. Filteringtools may be provided in the interface to allow the buyer to sort databy product type, material, technique, caliber of customer, or otherattributes, to expand or group data, to drill down into particularcategories or sub-categories, and the like.

In embodiments, the database of supplier information includes anontology of product categories, which may include a tree of categoriesand sub-categories of all types of products found in various datasources, such as customs records databases.

In embodiments, filters may be enabled, allowing a buyer to search alongdimensions of the data. In an example, if a buyer wishes to search forsuppliers who work with a particular material, a filtering algorithm maytake the union of all materials used by suppliers and present thosematerials as filters by which a set of suppliers may be selected bybuyers for further analysis. The filters may be presented in a graph ortree structure, so that a user may check a box to expand or contract aparticular portion of the tree, thereby allowing filtering bysub-category down to the leaf node in a tree. In embodiments, data arerepresented in tuples and results for a particular filter are ordered,such as by overall rating of the supplier. Results for a particularfilter may also be ordered by other features, such as most specializedand the like.

Filters may include construction techniques, dyeing, washing andembellishing techniques, gender of the product, company type, country ofsupplier, and the like. When data are represented in tuples, allproducts a supplier has made may be represented by material,sub-material, and technique (e.g., cotton—poplin—knitted sweater). In anexample, when a search is conducted for a cotton poplin sweater, thesuppliers who have made cotton poplin sweaters can be retrieved (not theunion of ones who have made cotton or poplin sweaters in this example).The tuple concept applies to children of each concept in a hierarchy, soif the user selects cotton, the user will receive results for cotton andall children of cotton in the materials hierarchy.

In embodiments, the search interface may include a non-tuple-basedsearch mode in which suppliers would be suggested as possible matchesfor the user's query that would be the union of the search terms. In anexample, if a supplier has worked with silk, and has produced pants, thesystem predicts that this supplier could make silk pants.

In embodiments, a user interface may include paid or sponsored links inaddition to search results derived from the rating platform describedherein.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may include privateand public versions of reports, where a searcher can get to a publicprofile by an Internet site but requires some additional relationship(possibly involving payment) in order to drill down to receive moreinformation, such as a complete profile of a supplier.

In embodiments, various icons, filters, sliders or other techniques maybe provided in a user interface to allow a user to explore informationabout a supplier. In embodiments, a user can click for “details,”thereby pulling up a ranking a supplier has for a given dimension, withinformation about the data source and a reminder of the purpose of thatdimension. In embodiments, icons may show if a score is high, medium orlow, thereby bucketing suppliers into general categories. Inembodiments, filters or sliders may allow users to refine results, suchas to show suppliers only if the product in question represents at leasta minimum percentage of that supplier's product mix.

In an embodiment, the user interface 2722 may facilitate a search basedon a geographic radius such that a plurality of entities 2708 may besearched based upon the related address of a given entity (e.g., a buyeror a supplier) or area around a given address (e.g., area aroundMichigan). In an example, a buyer may like to conduct a search forsuppliers available near a supplier which is in the San Francisco areain the United States. The result of this search may include all thesuppliers in the given area within a predefined distance (e.g., 5 Kms)from the searched supplier who may supply a specific product that mayalso be supplied by the searched supplier. The search region/distancefactor may be based on various aspects, such as driving distance,jurisdiction, county, state, and it may also be submitted by the user asa parameter of the search. The search results may also be ranked (e.g.based on a supplier rating).

In another embodiment, a buyer 2730 may obtain a list of suppliers 2732which are in the vicinity of a supplier which may be providing ‘woodenfurniture’. In addition, the buyer may like to receive certain detailsof all the suppliers listed in the search result. For this purpose, amore summarized view of the profile of the suppliers may be provideddirectly in the search result. In an embodiment, the rating may be anicon, integer, and the like. Based on this, a rank may be associatedwith each of the suppliers 2732. This ranking may in turn facilitatewell informed decision making for the buyer 2730 regarding theappropriate supplier. Risk may be related to political factor in aparticular area, geographic factor, weather factor, geology factor,targeted delivery date, and some other types of risk factors.

Supplier and buyer search may be further enhanced to take advantage ofthe profile characteristics described above as well as othercharacteristics including those derived from additional data sources,such as public operational data, financial metrics, socialresponsibility certifications, black list data, user generated feedback,and the like. Company search may include searching for suppliers from aparticular market or markets that serve a particular market or markets(“U.S. or European buyers of furniture from Indonesia). Search mayinclude searching for suppliers from a particular market or markets whosource from a particular market or markets (“Vietnamese furnituresuppliers who buy wood from china”). Alternatively, searching mayinclude searching for buyers from a particular market or markets thatbuy from a particular market or markets (“furniture suppliers fromIndonesia that serve the U.S. or Canada”). Additionally, naturallanguage processing based search may facilitate automaticallydetermining whether a user is looking for a set of buyers or a set ofsuppliers or for a particular company.

As described herein, user interface may be provided which may include asearch box. Natural language (e.g., English) may be entered in thesearch for searching various entities. Natural language keyword orkeywords entered in the search box may automatically be detected. Searchaspects, such as whether the user is searching for buyers, suppliers,and the like may also be detected while the user is entering the data inthe search box, even without pressing a search icon or button. Suchautomated detection may be done depending upon the time of the day,user's location, user's company/domain, and the keywords. In an aspect,filtering may be performed by a variety of filter-type algorithms.Filtering may be done on the basis of regions/countries. For exampleregions or/and countries may be captured from each of two records andcompared, when the regions match between the records, the records may beidentified as potential candidates for further processing such asclassification and clustering.

Search User Interface

FIG. 29 illustrates an exemplary user interface 2900 that may bepresented to a user for performing a search for a supplier or a buyer.The search feature may enable buyers and suppliers to find each other soas to connect with each other to establish business relations. Thesearch feature may be focused on customers and capabilities. Forexample, the search feature may assist a user in finding someone whomanufactures the product that the user is interested in. The search maybe driven by customs data that indicates suppliers of the product. Inanother example, the search feature may offer suggested search terms tothe user corresponding to keywords typed by the user. As illustrated, asearch term entry window 2902 may be shown to the user. The search termentry window 2902 may present one or more suggested keywords dependingon the keywords entered by the user. For example, if the user inputs“pho”, the search feature may obtain suggested keywords prefixed with“pho”, such as, “phone”, “photo”, “photo frame”, “photo album”, etc., inaccordance with a product associated with the keyword entered by theuser. In another example, the search feature may obtain the suggestedkeywords in accordance with the name of the buyer or supplier associatedwith the keyword entered by the user. The methods and systems describedherein may employ a plurality of techniques (e.g., keyword matchingalgorithms) so as to list more than two suggested keywords in ahierarchical order corresponding to the keyword entered by the user.

FIG. 30 illustrates an exemplary user interface 3000 that may bepresented to a user for delivering search results. The search resultsuser interface 3000 may allow the user to filter the results. In anexample, filtering may depend on the requirements of finding aparticular buyer or a supplier in a particular geographic region. Asillustrated, the search results may be categorized into a plurality ofdifferent categories such as a supplier 3002, a buyer 3004, a product3008 and a buyer inquiry category 3010. The supplier category 3002 maylist the suppliers that may be related to the keyword term as entered bythe user. The buyer category 3004 may list the buyers that may berelated to the keyword term as entered by the user. Similarly, theproduct category 3008 may list the products that may be related to thekeyword term as entered by the user. In addition, the buyer inquirycategory 3010 may list one or more inquiries that may be related to thekeyword term as entered by the user.

The user interface 3000 may present a plurality of filtering options tothe users for selectively accessing the information associated withsearch results for any of the illustrated categories. For example, underthe buyer category 3004, an option 3012 may enable the user to selectthe source of information for the search results. As shown, the user mayselect the one or more country locations so as to retrieve informationfrom the database associated with these locations. An option 3014 mayallow the user to select any of the buyer profiles that may have contactinformation and shipments related information for the buyers displayedin the search results for the buyer category 3004. Another option 3018may allow the user to select only those profiles that may be active inthe last predetermined number of days. This option may also facilitatethe user to select all profiles for the buyers who may not be active inthe last predetermined days. In an example, the user interface 3000 mayallow the user to restrict the display of the profiles for only thosebuyers who are active within a predefined range of dates and the usermay enter the predefined range. The user interface 3000 may furtherinclude additional options 3020 for the user to selectively view theprofiles as per the selected options as listed in the user interface3000. In addition, each of the options such as the option 3012, theoption 3014 and the option 3018 may include the number of profiles orthe results that may be shown to the user on selection of a particularcheck-box listed under the corresponding options. The user interface3000 may allow the user to sort the results so that the user may viewthe results depending upon the selection. In addition, for each of thesearch results, location of the corresponding buyer may be shown on themap 3024 and a shipment trend 3028 (if available) may be presented tothe user so that the user may update information before selection of aspecific buyer for purchasing good or services as provided.

FIG. 31 illustrates an exemplary user interface 3100 that may bepresented to a user when the user selects a “see all” link as listed inthe option 3020 of the user interface 3000. On selecting “location”option in the user interface 3100, the user may be shown an option 3102to select a particular geography for which the user may be interested inexploring profiles of the buyer from the particular geography.Alternatively, the user may enter address related information (such aszip code and city name and the like) in an input box 3104 so as toextract buyer profiles from these regions. The user interface 3100 mayfurther facilitate the selection of buyers from nearby regions of theparticular geography using a slider bar 3108.

FIG. 32 illustrates an exemplary user interface 3200 that may bepresented to a user when the user selects the supplier category 3002 ofthe user interface 3000. Under this supplier category 3002, an option3204 may facilitate the user to select the source of information for thesearch results. As shown, the user may select one or more countrylocations so as to retrieve information from a database associated withthese locations. An option 3208 may facilitate the user to select any ofthe supplier profiles that may have contact information, photosassociated with the products for selling by the supplier and shipmentsrelated information for the suppliers displayed in the search resultsfor the supplier category 3002. Another option 3210 may allow the userto select only those profiles of the suppliers that may be active in thelast predetermined number of days. The user interface 3200 may furtherinclude additional options 3212 for the user to selectively view theprofiles as per the selected options as listed in the user interface3200. In addition, each of the options such as the option 3204, theoption 3208 and the option 3218 may include the number of profiles orthe results that may be shown to the user on selection of a particularcheck-box listed under the corresponding options.

In addition, the user interface 3200 may allow the user to sort theresults using a drop down window 3214 so that the user may view theresults depending upon the sorting as facilitated by the drop downwindow 3214 of the user interface 3200. The drop down window 3214 maylist a plurality of factors based on which the user may sort the searchresults. The plurality of sorting factors may include relevancy factorsfor example number of shipments, expertise or any other factor. In anexample, a list of suppliers available for instant communication can beshown to a buyer for example through a chat feature.

The methods and systems described herein for performing a searchassociated with the identification of a relevant buyer or a supplier mayrequire an objective data (e.g., customs data) that may communicateinformation about the supplier for example information about productssold by the supplier and quantity of inventory handled or sold by thesupplier, scraped data and information on some level of activity orregency for example to assess whether a company is really active. In anexample, the search results may facilitate in identification of acompany that is responsive to messages communicated by the users.

In embodiments, an interface may be provided for rating a supplier, suchas on dimensions including an overall rating, product quality, customerservice, timeliness, English language capability, sample-making ability,respect for intellectual property, and the like. Buyer ratings may beaveraged or otherwise normalized and reported as part of a supplier'soverall rating 110. In embodiments, transactional data may be used toensure that a transaction occurred (to keep ratings unpolluted). If abuyer rating is good, this can give a significant boost to an overallrating 110.

In embodiments, buyers could specify which dimensions are most importantto them, and the overall rating 110 could be customized and weightedaccording to the buyer's preferences.

In embodiments, suppliers may be suggested to buyers based on the typesof qualities the buyer seems to appreciate, and the types of productsthe buyer has produced in the past.

The capability to identify and classify various buyers and suppliers as‘friends’ or the like may also be facilitated by using publictransaction records 3304, as shown in FIG. 33. The examples of publicrecords may be government registration records, evidences of businesslegitimacy, custom records, data sheets and reports for work order,audit records, bank records and some other types of public recordsdepicting various transactions. This may in turn help both the buyersand the suppliers to identify similar buyers and suppliers, and in turnhelp them make decisions regarding collaborations, competition, and someother types of strategic positioning.

Referring to FIG. 33, a computer implemented facility 3302 may be usedto collect and store public records of transactions 3304. The publicrecords may be government registration records, evidences of businesslegitimacy, custom records, data sheets and reports for work order,audit records, bank records and some other types of public recordsdepicting various transactions. The transaction records 3304 may beassociated with various entities (such as corporations, items, buyers,suppliers, third parties, etc.) and may generate information that may beaggregated transaction information (transactions associated with saidentities). An analysis may be performed for classification 3328 ofentities 3308. The classification 3328 may be a likeness basedclassification 3330. The likeness based classification 3330 may indicatethat the suppliers, buyers and the third parties may be classifiedaccording to the type, or degree of likeness, types of qualitiesappreciated, past experience or some other characterization parameter.It may be noted that the classification may be conducted to classify atleast one of a supplier and a buyer according to any one of thecharacterization parameters.

In embodiments, a buyer may identify like (similar) buyers. Similarly, asupplier may identify similar suppliers.

In other embodiments, a supplier may identify buyers like those of thesupplier. A buyer may also identify suppliers like those of the buyer.

In embodiments, a buyer may identify suppliers of a specified type.Further a supplier may identify buyers of a specified type.

In embodiments, a buyer may identify suppliers most likely to prefer aparticular buyer. Similarly, a supplier may identify buyers that wouldprefer a specific supplier.

In embodiments, the public records of transactions 3304 may also be usedfor classification of buyers 3338. This has been explained inconjunction with FIG. 33. The public records of transactions 3304 storedin the computer implemented facility 3302 may store transaction records3304 relating to various suppliers 3340 and buyers 3338. The informationassociated with the public records of transactions 3304 in relation tovarious entities 3308 may be further analyzed. Based on the analysis,buyer classification 3332 may be performed to classify various entitiesidentified in the transactions into buyers' category. It may beappreciated that the above described process and the system may also beused for classification of various entities into suppliers' category(supplier classification 3334).

In embodiments, an interface may include a capability for buyers tonetwork, chat or otherwise interact with each other with respect tosuppliers. Such a network may include a capability of identifying otherbuyers as “friends” or the like, thereby allowing sharing of informationonly among trusted parties. In such a case, information about suppliersfor particular buyers might be automatically populated, simplifying thesharing of information about experiences with particular suppliers usedby a network of buyers.

In embodiments, analyses could be used to assess and/or identify creditworthiness of suppliers or buyers.

In embodiments, ratings could be embedded into other media such as otherwebsites, emails, print media, and the like. Such embeddings could be aresult of calls to an Application Programming Interface (API), or othermethods.

In embodiments, ratings may be grouped into buckets, such as“excellent,” “good,” “fair,” “poor,” and “not trade worthy.” Variousmethods may be used to group suppliers into such buckets. In an example,“excellent” ratings may be given to suppliers who have businesslegitimacy and are in the top quartile in both loyalty and experience,“good” ratings may be given to suppliers who have business legitimacyand are in the top half in both loyalty and experience, “fair” ratingsmay be given to suppliers who have business legitimacy and are in thetop half in either loyalty or experience, “poor” ratings may be given toother suppliers who have business legitimacy, and “not trade worthy”ratings may be given to suppliers who do not have indicia of businesslegitimacy.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may assistsuppliers in generating leads among buyers for opportunities to supplyproducts. Information about how to improve ratings may be used to assistsuppliers in generating high quality leads.

The methods and systems of the platform may facilitate identifying asupplier of an item type that is disclosed in a transaction record evenif the supplier is not a party to the transaction. Identifying asupplier of an item, or a type of item may benefit buyers, suppliers,and the like by identifying potential new relationships between buyersand suppliers. A buyer may use the resulting supplier identification andother information in transaction records, such as declared customsvalue, to compare a current supplier cost with a different supplier costfor the same item. A buyer or a potential buyer may use at leasttransaction cost and delivery information to identify suppliers fromwhich the buyer may request a quote for supplying the item. Suppliersmay identify buyers of products that the supplier also provides. Thismay lead to efficient marketing and sales activity for the supplierbecause the supplier would know that buyer has a significant interest inthe item being purchased. By examining other information in thetransaction, such as buyer behavior, transaction history and the like,the supplier may identify an offer profile of the buyer and present avery well targeted offer to the buyer.

FIG. 34 depicts a process for gaining these advantages from the methodsand systems herein. The process depicted supports identifying a supplierof an item in a first transaction record by comparing the item in thefirst record to a second record. When a match is found, the supplieridentified in the second record may be determined to supply the item.After other conditions are met, such as country preference, supplierrestrictions, and the like the supplier can be reported. The process canbe repeated for any number of second transactions. The process could beperformed in a similar way for determining a buyer of an item. Inparticular, a plurality of transaction records 3402 may be collected andpresented to the process 3414. A reference record 3430 that includes areference product identifier 3408 or even just a product identifier 3408can also be an input to the process. After retrieving one of thepluralities of transaction records 3402 through the retrieval step 3414,the product identifier 3404 of the retrieved transaction record iscompared in step 3418 to the reference identifier 3408. If there is asufficient match between the two product identifiers 3404 and 3408, thesupplier identity 3412 is captured from the retrieved transaction recordin step 3420. If the supplier in the retrieved transaction record 3412is determined in step 3422 to be different than the reference supplier3410, additional conditions, such as the supplier location and the likemay be evaluated in step 3424 by looking at the retrieved transactionrecord and other data 3432 associated with supplier 3412 that may beavailable to the platform. If the other conditions are not met in step3424, additional transaction records may be retrieved in step 3414. Theprocess may be repeated any number of times based on various parametersthat can be used to control the process, such as a number of potentialsuppliers to identify, a number of records to retrieve, a number oftransaction records that are available, and the like. In the embodimentof FIG. 34, elements 3412 and 3410 could represent a buyer instead of asupplier. Also in step 3422, a desirable outcome may be a match between3412 and 3410. These and other variations in the process of FIG. 34 thatfacilitate matching buyers or suppliers with an item or product type areincluded herein.

In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, theinformation from the aggregated transactions may also be utilized forsupplier assessment. Supplier assessment may involve determining if aspecific buyer has ceased business operations with a supplier. Such adetermination may be based on a cycle time between shipments which maybe based on historical shipment data derived from transaction records. Acalculation of cycle time of shipments for an item from a supplier to abuyer may indicate an approximate date of a next shipment. If atransaction record reflecting the next shipment does not show up in thetransaction records within some period of time beyond the indicated nextshipment date, the methods and systems may indicate that the buyer mayhave stopped business operations with the supplier. The nature of thestoppage may be further determined if transaction records indicate thatthe buyer has begun receiving shipments of the item from a differentsupplier. Cycle time calculations may also be used to evaluate asupplier's delivery performance. Significant increases in cycle time mayindicate delay of shipment by the supplier. An assessment ofsupplier-buyer transaction status may also include factoring in buyerinventory. Buyer inventory may be factored in as a prediction orestimate of inventory.

In an embodiment of the present invention, methods and systems may beprovided for rating an entity based on rolled up customs data. Rolled upcustoms data may include aggregated, cumulative, summary, or similarmethods of combining a series of transactions into roll-up data.Rolled-up data may include a total of shipments over a period of timefor a buyer-seller-product association. Rolled-up data may include totalshipments over a period of time for product-shipper association. Any andall types of consolidation of transaction data that may be based on atime interval, a frequency, a region, an industry, a product, asupplier, a buyer, a shipper, a source region, an exchange rate, and thelike are herein included. In an example, rolled-up transaction data mayinclude a supplier's total output in each product category over acalendar month. In another example a country may report a total exportof a product during a week. In both cases critical transactioninformation that may be missing may be estimated or predicted in orderto develop otherwise useful information from the rolled-up information.The computer implemented facility 3402 may collect and store therolled-up public records of transactions 3404 and aggregate them to formaggregated transactions.

In an embodiment, the transaction records may relate to the shipmenttransactions.

Further, the aggregated transaction records may be associated with aparticular supplier. This associated information may be analyzed todetermine and convey the rating for the supplier.

It may be appreciated that this procedure may be conducted periodically(In an example, every three months). In another embodiment, the changein rating of a specific supplier may be presented as an alert.

In an example, the embodiments described above may be utilized by acompany dealing in an improved form of pesticide that may wish todetermine the ratings of a specific supplier of raw materials situatedin a different country. Therefore, the aggregated and associatedshipment transaction information (regarding the shipment time, schedule,price and delivery) for the supplier may be used to determine its ratingamong a plurality of similar suppliers. Subsequently, this rating may beinstrumental in helping the above company make supply related businessdecisions.

The public records of transactions may also be utilized for predictingminimum order requirements for a factory. Referring to FIG. 35, thecomputer implemented facility 3502 may collect a plurality of publictransaction records 3504. The collection step may be performed by acollection facility 3510. The collected records may be stored by astorage facility 3512. Upon collection and storage the plurality ofpublic transaction records 3504 may be aggregated by the aggregationfacility 3514 and associated with various entities 3508.

In an embodiment, the entity may be a factory.

In another embodiment, the entity may be a supplier.

In yet another embodiment, the entity may also be a subsidiary of asupplier.

In an example, information regarding the public transaction records 3504such as transaction receipts for a candle supplier selling a batch offactory-made candlesticks from a candle manufacturer may be aggregatedand associated by the computer implemented facility 3502. The analysisfacility 3520 may perform detailed analysis of this information togenerate various types of results. In an embodiment, the analysisfacility 3520 may predict the minimum order requirement for an entity,based on the analysis of the transactions. As described in the aboveexample, the analysis facility 3520 may predict the number of batchesthat the candle manufacturer may need to sell in order to cross theminimum profit mark. In another example, the analysis facility 3520 maypredict the minimum number of candle-stick batches that may need to besupplied to a third party in order to fulfill the required terms laiddown in a mutual contract. In yet another scenario, the analysisfacility 3520 may also facilitate predicting the minimum orderrequirements that a subsidiary of a supplier may need to supply amongthe batch of suppliers.

In embodiments, methods and systems are disclosed herein for usingdisparate data sources, including transactional records, such as fromcustoms transactions, as a basis for rating suppliers of products. Inembodiments, transactional data from actual transactions are used togenerate experience ratings, specialization ratings, customer loyaltyratings, or other ratings.

In embodiments, a rating system is provided in which buyers ratesuppliers of products, wherein transactional data, such as from customsrecords, are used to verify the legitimacy of the feedback, such as toverify that a rated transaction actually occurred.

In embodiments, methods and systems allow buyers to search forsuppliers, including with filters based on product category, material ortechniques offered or used by the suppliers, and to retrieve ratingsinformation about the suppliers, including ratings derived fromtransactional data (such as customs data) or ratings derived from otherbuyers.

In embodiments, a platform for enabling searches for suppliers andratings of suppliers may include various tools, such as tools formerging records, merging supplier names, and the like.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may include a quotetool by which buyers may identify suppliers and then generate a requestfor a quote from selected suppliers.

In embodiments, algorithms may be used for determining a pricingleverage metric, such as based on transactional data, such as customsrecords. In an example, a supplier's pricing leverage may depend on thepercentage of a supplier's shipments that are going to a single buyer,the proximity to a recent switch in supplier by one or more buyers, asupplier's overall score, a supplier's customer loyalty score, asupplier's experience in an area, and global factors, such as overalldemand for a product offered by a supplier. Thus, an interface may allowbuyers to assess pricing leverage based on calculations using one ormore of these factors, normalized or weighted to provide an overallestimate or score as to pricing leverage of a supplier.

In embodiments, access to the database may be restricted by the capacityof a supplier, and the ability of a supplier to ship small quantities.For instance, large buyers may need access to the entire database, whilesmaller buyers may need special access to suppliers that specialize insmaller orders.

A user interface may include various alerts, such as an alert for when anew supplier satisfies a search criterion of a buyer.

In an embodiment, alerts may be generated in order to notify the user incase any pre-set condition becomes true or any new information is addedwith respect to a product or supplier etc. i.e., an alert may begenerated in case new data is added with respect to a buyer in which theuser may be interested. In case new data is added with respect to acompany, the company may be marked or red flagged to indicate thatcertain change has been made with regard to it. For example, a buyer B1who buys “Beddings” from suppliers namely S1, S2 and S3 now startsbuying from supplier S4, the company B1 may be red flagged and an alertmay be generated to notify supplier S1 that a new supplier is alsosupplying to B1. According, S1 may make a new bid or change his strategytowards B1. In an aspect, various types of alerts may be generateddepending upon the need of the user. Another example may be citedwherein an alert is generated when there are new results to a search.For example, an alert may be set in case a new supplier or anothershipment of hammers is added to Ikea China. In this case the user shallreceive an alert when another supplier/another shipment of hammers isadded to the profile of Ikea China. Moreover, in case the user hasalready seen an alert another alert shall not be sent in this regard.

Alerts may also be set for tracking a particular company, for example analert may be set for a buyer B1 in case a new supplier starts supplyingto the same an alert may be sent. This may help with competitiveintelligence for a company both as a buyer as well as a supplier as itmay help a company to know more about various other organizations. Thisinformation may be useful for decision makers of the company. Forexample, a buyer may track his supplier and may be notified in case thesupplier starts supplying to a competitor which may be breach theircontractual agreement. Another example may be cited wherein an alert maybe generated in case a new supplier starts supplying in a particularregion. In addition, data alerts may be set for companies that undergo adrastic change in a particular characteristic relating to it. Forexample, an alert may be set if a particular buyer starts buying lessthan a fixed quantity of products.

Alerts may be set on data present in various databases and not limitedto customs database, and alerts may also be set for data stored in a‘Red Flag Database’ which may trigger a negative alert. Alerts based ondifferent databases may be helpful in generating and noting a trendrelated to a particular supplier, buyer, product etc. For example, macrotrends may be noted by tacking a product from analyzing the shippingdata. Market share of various countries or any change in the marketshare may also be known which may help suppliers to target buyers.

Furthermore, IP alerts may also be set notifying the user in case abuyer/supplier starts importing/exporting a product which may beprotected by a patent of the user.

In an embodiment, alerts may be generated by analyzing data related to aparticular entity and which is stored in a database such as customsrecords, shipper records etc. An alert may be of help to managers ofvarious companies who may take actions depending upon the alertgenerated. For example, consignee data may be analyzed to generatealerts when a supplier serves a new buyer. In another example, shipperdata may be used to generate alerts when a company orders goods from anew country and/or region.

A supplier of a particular commodity may be alerted when new suppliersstart supplying in a particular region. For example, a “furniture”supplier to south-east Asia may be notified when a new furnituresupplier starts supplying in Vietnam. Likewise, a supplier may also benotified in case a new buyer of a particular product starts buyingin/from a particular region which may help the supplier to target thenew buyer.

Furthermore, in case a search gives new results due to any changes inthe stored data, an alert may be generated. For example, when a buyer'sor supplier's risk metric changes the various users may be notified,this may help a user to take action. In an aspect, an alert may begenerated requesting feedback from a buyer about a supplier when ashipment from said supplier is received.

Methods and systems disclosed herein may include methods for syndicatingdata, such as delivering overall scores, category ratings (e.g.,“excellent,” “good,” “fair,” or “poor”) or the like, to third parties,such as for presentation in connection with other business data, such asdata presented to securities analysts, data presented to buyers forother purposes, and the like. Users will be able to provide subjectiveratings of suppliers on such third party presentations using an API.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may includecollaborative filtering techniques, such as to allow buyers to seeinformation relevant to other buyers who share characteristics with thebuyer (such as conducting similar searches, using similar suppliers, orhaving similar transaction records). Collaborative filtering may alsoallow suppliers to access information relevant to other suppliers withsimilar characteristics, such as ratings for suppliers to supply thesame types of products, to the same types of buyers, and the like.

In embodiments, a buyer scorecard 200 may be provided that shows summarydata for a supply chain of various suppliers, such as to indicate howthe buyer's suppliers collectively compare to suppliers of other buyers,such as competitors of the buyer.

In embodiments, a supplier comparison tool may be used to comparesuppliers on various attributes.

In embodiments, buyers may be rated on behalf of suppliers, such asbased on loyalty to suppliers.

In embodiments, ratings of suppliers or buyers as described throughoutthis disclosure may be used for third parties, such as, in embodiments,financial analysts. In an example, an analyst could evaluate the qualityof a company's supply chain based on collective supplier ratings.Similarly, an insurance company could use data about suppliers of abuyer to assess supply chain risk, such as for analyzing risk associatedwith insurance associated with activities of suppliers.

In embodiments, buyers may supply data to the platform described hereinin order to assist with developing ratings, but that data may bemaintained as proprietary to the buyer, such as to keep ratingsgenerated based on that data private to the buyer.

In embodiments, information about suppliers may be syndicated to desksoftware tools, such as tools used by purchasing managers and buyingstaff within buyer organizations. Thus, reports or ratings may be fed sothat they appear within the interface of one or more other desktop orweb-based tools used by such users.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may includefiltering tools for sorting data retrieved from customs recordsaccording to an industry hierarchy, such as a hierarchy of products,materials and techniques.

In embodiments, a search interface may allow for a search based onsupplier capability, such as based on information retrieved fromtransactional data, such as customs records.

In embodiments, a data analytics platform may be provided for analyzingsupplier capabilities, such as based at least in part on transactionaldata about supplier activities, such as transactional data from customsrecords.

In embodiments, a rating system may be based on a combination of customsdata and other data, such as data based on an internal database oftransactions made by an agent on behalf of buyers transacting withsuppliers.

In embodiments, a platform may include a transactional facility, such asfor allowing buyers to transact with suppliers that have been identifiedby the search and ratings facilities described herein. Suchtransactional facility may include modules related to ordering, pricing,payment, fulfillment, and the like.

Referring to FIG. 36, in accordance with the methods and systemsdescribed herein, the public records of transactions 3604 may beutilized for rating a sub-entity of a supplier 3608. The computerimplemented facility 3602 may collect and store the public transactionrecords 3604 among the plurality of buyers 3630 and suppliers 3632. Uponaggregating and associating the transactions 3604 with the entities 3608(such as buyers and suppliers), an analysis may be performed regardingthe sub-entities of the suppliers 3632. Examples of sub-entities 3640may include a factory, a group of factories 3642, subsidiaries 3644, andsome other types of entities.

In an example, the aggregated transactions information may reveal a listof twenty entities doing business in an uptown market. A searcher mayutilize the methods and systems disclosed herein to determine a list ofseven entities that may be sub-entities for a specific supplier S1. Inaccordance with the embodiments of the present invention, these sevenentities may be rated based on the transactional data. The sevenentities (say 2 factories, 3 subsidiaries, and 2 sales divisions) may berated based on the timeliness of the delivery, feedback from the buyers,and so on.

In an embodiment, the analysis facility 3624 may determine thesub-entities 3640 for a supplier from the group of entities. Thedetermination of sub-entities may be based on the analysis of the publictransaction records 3604. In an embodiment, the public transactionrecords 3604 may be customs transaction records.

In another embodiment, the sub-entities 3640 of the supplier may berated based on the analysis of the aggregated transactions and otherinformation and parameters as explained throughout the disclosure.

Methods and systems of the present invention, may allow a client to makefinancial investment decisions based on data that is aggregated from awide variety of different sources, such as customs data, internationaltrade data, suppliers, buyers, intermediaries, agents, partner countrydata, domestic production data, world commodity prices, shipping data,import data, export data, credit-based data (e.g. Dun Bradstreet),certification data, various industry and tracking indices, regulatorydata, watchdog agency data, industry self regulating data, securitiestrading data, tax records, and the like.

Financial investments may include assessing and managing risk; thereforethe aggregated data may be used to determine various risks associatedwith a financial decision. Risks may be related to a capacity to executea large order, subcontracting arrangements or terms, socio-economicenvironment of a country, regulatory risk, tax risk, political risk,currency fluctuation, non-performance of a contract, an uncertaintyrelated to termination of the contract, achieving target delivery dates,intellectual property, and compliance of regulatory environmentprevalent in the country where the transaction is likely to take place,trade routes, and the like. Risk assessments for various financialdecisions may include assessing entities to be considered for doingbusiness, amount of payment to be paid in advance to a supplier, amountof insurance to purchase, and the like.

The aggregate data may include information that allows organization ofthe data based on industry affiliation as may be determined fromanalysis of the data. In an example, organization based on variousindustries such as apparel/retail industry, electronics industry, andthe like is possible. Further by determining industry affiliations ofthe data from the various data sources, a user may select an entity namesuch as “BANANA REPUBLIC”, “GAP”, “OLD NAVY”, and the like and, based onthe industry affiliations of the selected name found in the data, theplatform may aggregate and provide analysis of the one or more industryaffiliations associated with the selected name. In this example,“apparel” may be one of the industries affiliated with “GAP” so datafrom the various data sources that includes references to the “apparel”industry may be processed.

In addition, the client may be allowed to identify and aggregate databased on different locations, subsidiaries, affiliations, and otherlegal relationships of an organization. For example, the client may wishto compare sales of an organization ‘X’ in various locations. Bycombining data from the various data sources, and matching data in thecombined sources based on entity identifiers in the data, the sales forthe organization may be determined based on states, countries, regions,other locations, and the like. By identifying the various locations ofthe organization, in addition to determining the sales attributed to theindividual locations, the client may also build an aggregate profile forthe organization based on the individual location data.

The platform may support determining a profile for each entity matchedin the data sources. The platform may also support the creation andmaintenance of meta-profiles that may include any combination ofindividual entity profiles, an industry profile, a geographic regionprofile, and the like. In this way, the data can be processed based onthe profile or meta-profile being selected for analysis.

Country Profiles

FIG. 37 illustrates an exemplary user interface 3700 that may bepresented to a user to disclose information regarding import and exportdata for a particular geography, country or region so that the user maybe able to determine transaction histories between the buyers andsuppliers, shipment history, types of materials typically shipped,available buyers and suppliers for a particular product, and the likefor the particular geography, country or region. As shown in FIG. 37, amap 3702 may be presented to the user so that the user may select atleast a portion of the map to indicate a region of interest. The usermay utilize the zoom in/zoom out feature 3704 to modify a granularitylevel of the particular geography, country or region in the map 3702.Additionally, a list of countries 3708 in the particular region may beshown to the user so that the user may select any of these countries todetermine information regarding the import and export data for theselected country of the particular region.

FIG. 38 illustrates an example of user interface 3800 that may bepresented to a user when the user selects a particular geography fromthe map 3702 for example India from the map 3702 of the user interface3800 to retrieve the information associated with the import and exportdata between for example the US and India. The user interface 3800 mayfor example present details about number of suppliers 3802 that mayprocure products and/or services for buyers from the US so that the usermay get information on how many suppliers are available from India. Theuser interface 3800 may further present currency exchange rate relatedinformation between the selected country and the US so as to provideupdated information to the user about exchange rated between thecountries. As shown, the user interface 3800 may display a table 3808listing top suppliers from India. The information regarding the topsuppliers may be generated on considering actual shipment relatedinformation so as to provide authentic information to the user. The userinterface 3800 may list the various ports in a table 3810 so that theuser may be able to locate the relevant location of the port throughwhich the user may import the products from India. Additionally, thesuppliers and ports as listed in the respective tables 3808 and 3810 maybe shown on the map 3812 for an easy reference for the user.

While data sources may provide information that can be matched toentities, some data sources may not include specific entity identifiers.Industry standards data sources, such as indices (e.g. shipping costdata) may be applicable to activities such as shipping but may notdirectly include entity data. The platform may determine appropriaterelationships between this ‘entity-less’ data and specific entities bycomparing certain data aspects of the data that can be associated with aspecific entity. In an example, a company that is identified in customsdata as receiving products that were shipped from via sea freight may beassociated with a shipping index (e.g. Baltic Dry Index) for purposes ofpredicting shipping costs and the like for the company. By comparingfreight costs for two companies that both ship via sea freight, it maybe possible to establish a relative ranking in shipping/cost performanceof different organizations that may be useful in financial decisionmaking.

By analyzing shipment data, sales data, public financial records ofentities, and the like, the platform may predict financial performancefactors for an entity, such as an estimate of inventory that may bebased on financial statement of the organization, past deliveries, andthe like. Data sources that may be used for such a prediction mayinclude government registration records, custom records, earningreports, data sheets and some other types of public records depictingvarious transactions of an organization. Such predictions may also helpestimate a company's potential change in earnings in the future.

By combining product shipment related information (e.g. as may bedetermined from customs transaction records) with other company andindustry sales and financial data, growth of a new product may betracked and predictions of the future sales of the product or financialperformance of entities associated with the supply chain of the newproduct may be estimated.

The information from non-transaction data sources may help inestablishing a supplier or buyer rating. In an example, if a supplier isflagged with a fraudulent charge such as money laundering, and the like,the overall score of the supplier may be lowered. Also, such a change inrating may be communicated to a buyer, partner, banker, and the like ofthe supplier to facilitate managing risk associated with doing businesswith the supplier. Similarly, when matching public financial reportingdata to a buyer's entity profile negatively impacts a rating of a buyer,suppliers who may extend credit to the buyer may desire to be notifiedfor purposes of making financial decisions regarding the buyer.

Further, customs records may include details about a bank and/orshipping organization that is participating in the customs transaction(international shipment). Therefore, financial risk may be determinedfor these third parties associated with a customs transaction (not justthe buyers and sellers). In addition, based on this data it may bepossible to predict levels of risk for any of the parties participatingin customs transactions based on risk profiles of any of the otherparties. If a bank that is identified in customs records is in default,then ratings for the suppliers of the goods in the transaction may benegatively impacted based on the risk of the bank not following throughon a loan obligation of the transaction.

When data from a variety of data sources are matched to entities, it maybe possible to compare the performance of two or more differentorganizations. For example, data relating to total earnings of theorganizations, latest products of the organizations, and the like mayobtained from publicly available financial databases. In embodiments,the financial data may be utilized for comparing the performance of thetwo organizations. To this aspect, the coverage ratios, liquidityratios, and other financial ratio may be compared. Similarly, thecomputer implemented facility may compare the intangible assets toobtain an estimate on the performance of the two organizations. Whenevaluating products launched by the organizations, factors such as thenumber of samples of the new product brought into market, sales of thenew product, backlog of the new product, lead time of the new product,and the like may be compared for assessing the performance of the twoorganizations.

Data from the data sources may be assigned a weight, such as aconfidence factor when being used for making financial relateddecisions. The weight may be based on the size or number of thetransactions carried out by organizations. Weights may be based on theconfidence of data associated with the suppliers/buyers with whom theorganizations are transacting, and the like. In this way, the analysisof entities may be based on the weights associated with data matched tothe entities.

As described earlier, data may be analyzed for industries, marketplaces,regions, businesses, groups of businesses, lists of businesses, types ofbusinesses (e.g. domestic or multi-national), and the like. Thisanalysis may be called macro level analysis because it may beindependent of any specific entity while using information matched toentities that are included in the macro level. Macro level analysis mayfacilitate detecting trends which may, for example help identify hotlocations for purchase of specific products or services. For example,macro level analysis may identify a trend that indicates a specificlocation may be a hot spot for manufacturing electric engines. Becausethe macro level analysis may include data from traditionaltransaction-type data and non-transaction data, the analysis may beinherently validated because of the use of various independent datasources. Tools may be provided that may facilitate integration ofmacro-level data with the entity-specific data to forecast entityperformance.

In an embodiment, data may be aggregated from a variety of sources,including, without limitation, customs data associated with actualimport/export transactions, private or semi-private data (e.g. shipperor logistics provider data), macro-data (e.g. a variety of parametersthat are associated with economic and political situation of a country),and the like. It may be particularly helpful to utilize the range ofdata sources to provide business profile (e.g. rank and risk profiles)for an industry, a region, a country, a business district, and the like.

In addition to macro-data impacting supplier and/or buyer ratings,macro-data may also be used or generated for a region that mayfacilitate providing a rating (e.g. business risk, credit risk, etc) forthe region. Macro-type data may include, without limitation, a countrycontext of a party, whether a party is registered with governmentauthorities, an assessment of a trading environment in a country,macroeconomic information, currency fluctuation, and the like. The rankand risk profiles for an industry, a region, a country, a businessdistrict, and the like may be related to factors such as political,geographic, climatic, geological, financial risks, intellectualproperty, and the like. In an example, the macro-data factors that mayimpact risk for an industry, a region, a country, a business district,and the like may include variables such as GNI per capita, currencyvolatility, cost to export, political stability, and the like. Amacro-data user interface may allow selection of parameters (e.g. GNIper capita and cost to export) to generate a country context value thatcould be applied to calculate a rating for a region, country, and thelike. Furthermore, determination of regional rating may depend partiallyor completely on some or all of the macro data selected from some or allthe groups, as described herein and elsewhere.

In embodiments, a rating for the risk of doing business in a country isprovided which may be based on macro data aggregated from transactionalcustoms data, customs data related to transactions of the buyer with athird party, or some other parameter. In addition, ratings may also bebased on two or more macro type data factors from a group including butnot limited to the country context of a party, whether a party isregistered with government authorities, an assessment of a tradingenvironment in a country, macroeconomic information, public recognitionof a party, number of shipments, duration of experience, size oftransactions, extent of international experience, caliber of customers,customer loyalty, specialization in product categories, specializationin manufacturing techniques, specialization in materials, specializationin gender, feedback on language skills, feedback on sample makingability, respect for intellectual property, quality management, socialresponsibility, environmental responsibility, and the like.

The multi-sourced data trend analysis may facilitate making investmentdecisions. In an example, investors interested in trading the stock of ashipping company or market segment may utilize information derived fromthe trend analysis to help guide investment decisions. In the example,shipping organizations involved in transportation of oil may benefitfrom an increase in global demand for oil. Trends derived from customstransaction records for oil importation may indicate or substantiate asuspected increase in revenues for companies transporting oil. Trendsabout movement of various products may point at increased businessbusinesses opportunity in these products. Trends analysis about themovement of products and commodities may aid in forecasting pricemovements and demand of these products and services, which may reflecton the potential value of the entities participating in the supply ofthese products or services.

The platform may include a free-text extraction tool that may identifyrelevant portions of textual data, such as press releases. The relevanttext may correspond to a particular product or organization. In anexample textual data may be extracted and then the extracted data may beapplied in an analysis of the customs transaction and other data toidentify trends corresponding to a particular product or organization.

The platform may facilitate bringing together trends of an organizationacross various categories. For example, the trends of an organizationrelative to the world, relative to a region, relative to a segment, andthe like may be combined for conveniently analyzing the trends of aparticular organization. These trends may facilitate decipher theperformance of products of an organization in a specified region.Likewise, trends may facilitate identification of regions of increasingor declining demand. The product demand may be ascertained from theshipping area and international trade data sources.

Macro-Level Trend Data

The methods and systems described herein may support macro-level trenddata. Macro trend data may be useful in determining where a supply baseshifts over time. Information from a variety of sources can be mined toidentify a category of trend information, such as by using an HTS(Harmonized Tariff Schedule) Code. The macro trend data may beaggregated from a large number of HTS Codes for an organization, ageographic region, a market, a market segment, etc. For example, the HTScode may provide details regarding a product type and geography relatedto that particular product type. In an embodiment, the HTS code may be aproduct type such as an automobile, particularly a two-wheeler, and thegeography may be India that is exporting the two-wheeler. Accordingly,the HTS codes of various types of automobiles, particularly,two-wheelers, and the geography related to the two-wheelers may beidentified, which may be analyzed to determine macro-level trendinformation such as supply base shifting over time.

Further, the trends in a particular region obtained for a product mayhave significance to currencies of countries in that region. Positive ornegative growth trends of the product may depend upon currency of acountry. For example, a product with small volumes shipping into acountry may not be influenced by the currency fluctuation significantlybut large trade volume associated with that product may be significantlyimpacted based on the valuation of currency of that country. Likewise,import data of products may be influenced with the currency of acountry. For example, data related to a product may be combined withhistorical currency prices of a country for finding positive impact ofthe import on the current valuation of currency or negative growthtrends of the product. In addition, the data related to the product maybe combined with public forecasts of finance ministers about a country'sexports may be useful in predicting trends of trading in that country.

Refer to FIG. 28 for examples of various macro trend analysis andreporting capabilities of the methods and systems described herein.

Because trade transaction records (e.g. customs records) allow forentities to remain anonymous so that there is no identifying informationfor an entity participating in a customs transaction, it may benecessary to separate out organizations that may have decided to “optout” from having their names included in customs records. To thisaspect, the platform may detect the presence of “opt out” entities andmay provide analysis related to the same. For example, the rating of asupplier who ships to “opt out” buyers” may be adjusted based on theratio of “opt-out” buyers to “opt-in” buyers. Analysis of entities thatdo business with “opt-out” organizations may be compensated by analyzingjust the non opt-out records and excluding the “opt-out” records fromthe analysis or rating. In another implementation, opt-out data may becompensated by interpolating the available data for these opt-outorganizations. Even when entities “opt-out” of customs records, otherinformation, such as product codes, may be sufficient to identify otherbuyers or shippers who also buy or sell similar products. In this way,the platform may provide analysis of a entity's competitors even whenthe competitors have “opted-out” in customs transaction records.

The platform may detect the presence of a new entity in a market placeeven when the entity or an entity that the new entity is doing businessis an “opt-out” entity. If an “opt-out” entity has been receivingproducts from one supplier and new customs records indicate that the onesupplier is now delivering fewer products while a new supplier isdelivering the balance of the products, it may be possible to detectthat the opt-out company has introduced a new supplier. Based on anyindustry affiliation or based on product references in the customsrecords, other buyers of similar products may be notified of the newsupplier. Similarly, when a known buyer starts receiving products from asupplier that they have not previously used, even if the supplier is anopt-out entity, it is possible for the platform to detect the supplierchange/addition and may provide relevant information or alerts tocompetitors of the known buyer.

In another scenario, the platform may use data related to a supply chainfor assessing sustainability of an organization in a market. The supplychain related data may include data related to the goods shipped by theorganizations, distances traveled for shipment, source of shipments, andthe like. Supply chain data may be used to establish an environmentalprotection or “greenness” rating of organizations. Organizations withhigh cost transportation in their supply chain may be rated low on“greenness” due to the amount of carbon output required in the supplychain. Furthermore, the “greenness” assessments may facilitateestablishing a new greenness index for organizations.

The analysis of entities described herein, including various riskratings and the like, may be beneficial in securities tradingactivities. Securities trading may be based on assessments andpredictions of future business value and the ratings and assessmentsdescribed herein may contribute to an estimate of future businessvaluations. Traders may look to the ratings of individual entities whenconsidering how to trade the securities of the individual entities. Fundmanagers may look to the ratings of industries, regions, and the like tomake decisions about which equities to add or remove when adjusting thefund's allocation of assets. By knowing an estimate of risks associatedwith an entity, a securities trader may adjust a hedging strategyaccordingly. Trends associated with products that may be provided by theplatform may factor into a derivatives securities trading plan. Indexedequities may be traded based on an assessment of risk profile of the keyentities represented by the index. When analyzing a transaction, such asa merger or acquisition, the risk profile of the potential acquisitiontarget may be valuable to an acquiring entity to determine valuation ofthe target. By providing comparisons of entities, the platform mayfacilitate recommending transactions (such as recommending companies toacquire). The ratings, trends, macro level assessment, predictions, andthe like that are possible with the platform may benefit analysis of alltypes of trading strategies including: buy/hold/sell decisions, riskallocation/pooling, hedging, credit-default swaps, portfolio insurance,asset allocation, program trading, thresholds/limits, and the like.Because the ratings, trends, and other assessment may be executed at alllevels of business (e.g. division, company, sector, geography, index,macro-level, and the like) investment decisions that relate to any ofthese levels (e.g. sector financial analysis) may benefit from the useof the platform.

The methods and systems described herein may include using a computerimplemented facility to provide a marketplace system for accessinginformation and resources of suppliers and buyers. The marketplacesystem may contain one or more supplier or buyer profiles associatedwith a supplier or a buyer. A user may engage the marketplace system tolocate a buyer or supplier whose profile satisfies a certain criteria.

A supplier or buyer profile may initially contain basic publicinformation. The basic public information may be of the type generallyavailable about the supplier or the buyer, such as company name,address, phone number, website address, and the like. A supplier or abuyer may claim, or take ownership of its profile within themarketplace. The marketplace system may provide a method for a supplieror a buyer to create an account within the system, which would identifythe supplier's or buyer's profile. A registration fee may be associatedwith registering, or claiming a profile. A supplier or a buyer may beoffered options for supplementing its claimed profile with additionalinformation. As an example, and not a limitation, the additionalinformation may be of the type collected by the marketplace system fromcustoms data, shipper data, and other publically or privately availabledata sources. As another example, the additional information may begenerated by the supplier or the buyer and uploaded to the system.

A supplier or a buyer may be presented with a plurality of optionsrelating to managing and administering data associated with theirprofiles in the marketplace. A supplier or a buyer may pay a fee andtake control of a profile and the information provided, opt-out of themarketplace system by removing the profile, leave the profile asgenerated by the marketplace system, pay a fee to have the marketplacefacilitators manage the profile, select certain types of data to beallowed to be associated with the profile, combinations thereof, and thelike. Further in the embodiment, suppliers or buyers may be presentedwith one or more privacy options. These privacy options may allow themto decide how certain information is shared through the marketplacesystem. A supplier or a buyer may decide to allow access to publicinformation about the company once it is validated or approved by them.They may alternatively allow certain private data to be made availableto subscribers of the marketplace. The information may be available fora fee to be paid by the user accessing the data. A condition of makingthis information available may require that a portion of that fee beingshared with the supplier or the buyer. To encourage suppliers or buyersto actively manage or subscribe to profile management services, themarketplace may include a disclosure rating system associated with theamount and type of information a supplier or a buyer chooses todisclose. Such a disclosure rating may be used to rank the supplier orthe buyer among its peers.

FIG. 39 illustrates an example of a user interface 3900 that may bepresented to a user for updating contact information associated with asupplier or a buyer profile. The contact information may be shown in thesearch results so that any person looking for a specific supplier orbuyer may utilize this contact information to directly communicate withthe specific supplier or the buyer. Such type of contact information mayalso be used while prioritizing placement of the specific supplier orthe buyer in the search result. For example, the system may use thecurrent state of the buyer or the supplier to list the buyer or thesupplier in the search result when a user searches for buyers orsuppliers in the current state of the buyer or supplier. As shown, theuser interface 3900 may display a form that may facilitate the buyer orthe supplier to input basic public information such as a company name,an email address, a corporate address, a company city, state or country,phone number, website address, and the like so that the publicinformation may be listed in the search results when the user selectsthis profile.

To establish and maintain high quality profile data, the marketplacesystem may provide a verification facility. The verification facilitymay use a plurality of records of transactions among a plurality ofbuyers and a plurality of suppliers to verify information that asupplier or a buyer provides to be associated with its profile. As anexample, and not a limitation, the marketplace system verificationfacility could help a user to verify a supplier's claims aboutmanufacturing throughput by comparing them with shipping quantities forsimilar items. The marketplace may require a fee from a supplier todisplay an indication that its profile has been verified by themarketplace. Similarly, a buyer using the marketplace may be charged afee for accessing the verification facility or for obtaining theverified status of a supplier.

To further enhance marketplace data quality, the verification facilitymay perform an accuracy check of a profile for accuracy, usingpublically and privately available information. The accuracy check maybe performed automatically, and in real time, and a profile may beupdated immediately to reflect validated changes, such as changesassociated with shipping delays, price fluctuations, and the like. Suchreal-time features of the marketplace data quality system may enableother marketplace aspects such as bidding systems and trading systemsthat rely on accurate and timely data.

As shown in FIG. 40, a verification facility 4012 may be provided forengaging the plurality of buyers 4018 and the plurality of suppliers4024 to establish authentic and verified business relations among themon the marketplace system. The verification facility 4012 may beincluded in a computer facility 4002 that may be similar to the computerfacility as described above in the description for FIGS. 4, 5, 6 and 7.The verification facility 4012 may be configured to access and monitorthe profile information 4030 corresponding to the plurality of buyers4018 and the plurality of suppliers 4024 of the marketplace system.Whenever a particular buyer such as the buyer 4020 may access themarketplace system to establish business relations with the othersuppliers or buyers, the verification facility 4012 may activate anactivity analyzer 4034 to detect any fraudulent activities associatedwith the buyer 4020. For example, the activity analyzer 4034 may beconfigured to analyze past behavior, government and non-government data,financial reports, experts opinion, customers feedback and the like forthe particular buyer 4020 so as to detect any fraudulent activitiesassociated with the particular buyer 4020. The verification facility4012 may be configured to block an access for the marketplace system forthe plurality of buyers 4018 and plurality of suppliers 4024 if anyfraudulent activity may be detected for any of the buyer or thesupplier. Further, the verification facility 4012 may be configured toprevent even listing of the buyer or supplier having fraudulentcredentials and/or past fraudulent activities in the search results thatmay be generated when a user may access the marketplace system forcontacting buyers or suppliers.

As illustrated in FIG. 40, the verification facility 4012 may beconfigured to include a credential analyzer 4038 that may includeinstruction to enable credential verification of the of the plurality ofbuyers and the suppliers listed on the marketplace system. For example,the credential analyzer 4038 may be configured to interact with theprofile information 4030 to access the credential details such as email,telephone, mail address and the like to facilitate verification of thebuyer or supplier. In an example, the credential analyzer 4038 may senda verification email to the email addresses of the buyers and/orsuppliers to verify the email address or phone number such that thebuyers or the suppliers may verify the contacted email by clicking onthe links in the verification email.

Further, the verification facility 4012 may be configured to include atransaction analyzer 4040 that may verify the transactions usingtransaction information 4042 that may occur between two or more of abuyer, seller, distributor, shipper, carrier, customs agency, nationalsecurity agency, financial institution or other type of individual,group or agency that would typically be involved in the transaction. Thetransaction analyzer 4040 may verify these transactions so as to detectany statements in a marketplace participant's profile that areinconsistent with details of a transaction that may impact ratings ormay require blocking of the buyers and suppliers registered with themarketplace system. In other words, information in the participant'sprofile is attempted to be validated by evaluating the content oftransaction records associated with the participant. The transactionanalyzer 4040 may analyze transaction information 4042 that may includeorders, invoices, shipping documents, payment authorization, paymentexecution, customs documents, security documents and the like. Forexample, transaction analyzer 4040 may facilitate in verification of thetransactions using the records such as customs records that may show anactual import transaction in which the buyer imported goods from thesupplier, from a bill of lading, from a bank-issued receipt, and thelike.

The verification facility 4012 may facilitate verification of thesuppliers or the buyers by providing instructions to a third partyservice provider that may verify the supplier credentials, visitsupplier premises, perform quality inspection for the products that maybe requested by the buyers. As illustrated in FIG. 40, the verificationfacility 4012 may be configured to access the third party data 4044 toverify the suppliers or the buyers. The third party data 4044 mayinclude information collected by the third party service provider whileperforming a ground level verification of the buyers or suppliers. Oncompletion of the verification, the computing facility 4002 may utilizethe results of the verification facility 4012 for certifying thesuppliers with the one or more regulatory compliances that may assistthe buyers to interact with the other buyers or suppliers that may becommitted to deliver high quality products to the buyers. Theverification facility 4012 may facilitate in establishing a brand imageof the marketplace system that can assist in locating a high quality andauthentic supplier for the buyers. Similarly, the verification facility4012 may facilitate in verification of the buyers and prevent listing ofa fraudulent buyer that may have duped the suppliers on one or morereasons. As a result, the verification facility 4012 may facilitate thesuppliers to perform business transaction directly with the authenticbuyers.

The marketplace system may also include a self-disclosure integrityscale or rating. A self-disclosure integrity scale may compare theinformation provided by the supplier or buyer associated with theirprofile information with previously recorded shipper information aboutthem. As an example, and not a limitation, a supplier claiming shippingtimes of less than a week for its products that is not supported bytransaction history extracted from shipper information would receive alow self-disclosure integrity scale rating. Another example may be citedwherein a buyer's transaction history extracted from shipper informationmay be used to verify a buyer's ability to perform in a transaction. Abuyer rating system may be provided, based on timely payment forshipments, rate of returns, quantity of shipments, types of productsshipped, and the like.

Further in the embodiment, a formula may be used to reward accuracy byallowing higher visibility for suppliers and buyers with a higherself-disclosure integrity scale rating. Since higher visibility maypotentially lead to more business, a supplier or buyer may thus beencouraged to maintain high self-disclosure integrity in its profile.

FIG. 41 illustrates a self-disclosure integrity rating graph 4102 forone or more marketplace participants (e.g. buyers or suppliers, and thelike) that may be presented to the user so as to represent a level ofconfidence in self-disclosure (e.g. participant profile) of theparticipants in the marketplace system. In an example, a computingfacility may be configured to evaluate the integrity of theself-disclosed portion(s) of a participant's profile so that anself-disclosure integrity rating may provided. The self-disclosureintegrity rating may aid the buyer or the supplier in quicklyunderstanding the degree to which a participant has provided informationin his/her profile that is substantiated by actual records oftransactions, and the like. In an example, the computing facility 4002may execute a plurality of instructions to access information associatedwith such as business transactions, customer feedbacks, social networkresponses, customs data, profile information and the like so as todetermine the self-disclosure integrity ratings for marketplaceparticipants. In an example of self-disclosure integrity ratingdetermination, the verification facility 4012 of FIG. 40 may beconfigured to perform identification verification of the buyer orsupplier for which the self-disclosure integrity rating may need to bedetermined. The verification facility 4012 may be configured to apply aset of rules while performing the identification verification in orderto determine a level of confidence about the integrity of the supplieror the supplier's goods. For example, if the supplier has been flaggedin the past in the database as selling inferior items, and the supplierhas made statements to the contrary on its profile page, then thesupplier may be assigned a very low self-disclosure integrity rating.

In addition, the computing facility 4002 may compare the profileinformation with the actual facts that may be derived using the dataextracted from authorized governments resources or other agencies. Anymisleading or deviated information appearing in the profile informationassociated with the buyer or supplier may affect the correspondingself-disclosure integrity rating. For example, a particular participantmay be given lesser self-disclosure integrity rating if it is found thatthe particular participant has disclosed inaccurate information (e.g.,business size, shipping location, delivery times and the like) on theprofile. In another example, a supplier may be given a reducedself-disclosure integrity rating if the supplier has disclosed priorsales of a particular product in its profile for which delivery of suchparticular product cannot be confirmed through shipping and/or customsrecords. A higher self-disclosure integrity rating associated with anybusiness entity may provide a prospective buyer/supplier with someassurance that the business entity is generally authentic and reliableregarding developing business relations. As a result, theself-disclosure integrity rating may promote establishing a culture ofdisclosing accurate information by the plurality of buyers or thesuppliers in the marketplace system.

As shown in FIG. 41, the self-disclosure integrity rating graph 4102 mayindicate a comparison of the self-disclosure integrity ratings of threedifferent suppliers in the form of a bar graph. Other variations in theillustrations of data may also be presented. Out of these threesuppliers (i.e., a supplier 1, a supplier 2, and a supplier 3), thesupplier 2 has the highest self-disclosure integrity rating. Whenever abuyer searches for product that may be supplied by these threesuppliers, the buyer may be shown the self-disclosure integrity ratinggraph 4102. It is highly likely that the buyer may be interested ingathering more information for the supplier who has the highestself-disclosure integrity rating. In this scenario, the buyer may selectthe supplier 2 for exploring new business opportunities. As a result,self-disclosure integrity rating may enable the users of the marketplacesystem to identify buyers and suppliers who can be reliable businesspartner and buyers or suppliers who may not be of questionablereliability due to lack in integrity in conducting business transactionin an ethical manner.

FIG. 42 illustrates an example embodiment of a method 4200 for rewardingthe buyers or supplier on disclosing authentic and reliable informationof their respective profiles. The method 4200 may use theself-disclosure integrity ratings of the buyers or suppliers forcalculating the corresponding rewards for the buyers or suppliers. Atstep 4202, the method 4200 may select a buyer or supplier for which theself-disclosure integrity reward may need to be calculated. At step4204, self-disclosure integrity rating of the selected buyer or suppliermay be calculated and at step 4208, the self-disclosure integrity rewardformula may be accessed to generate rewards for the buyers and supplierswith high self-disclosure integrity ratings who have disclosed accurateinformation regarding business credentials. For example, a particularbuyer may disclose information regarding payment policy on cancellingthe order, payment of interest on delay in paying to the supplier, andother payment related terms and conditions for the suppliers. Thisinformation may help in establishing the integrity of the buyer amongthe plurality of suppliers and thereafter, in calculation of the rewardsusing the self-disclosure integrity reward formula for the particularbuyer.

At step 4210, the rewards may be calculated for the selected buyer orsupplier. In an example, the reward to a particular supplier for a highself-disclosure integrity rating may include pole positioning for searchresults that include the particular supplier. In another example, thereward may include providing bonus points to the buyer or supplierdepending on the values associated with the self-disclosure integrityratings of the selected buyer or supplier. The buyer or supplier may usethe bonus points to convert into financial values that may be offered bythe marketplace system. The rewards may also include recommending theselected buyer or seller to the marketplace participants. The rewardsmay also include providing access to specialized services that may beoffered by the marketplace system so as to enhance the businessopportunities for the selected buyer or supplier. For example, themarketplace system may offer the selected buyer or supplier to use emailcampaign services so as to send an email including informationassociated with the products offered by the buyer or supplier to theplurality of users of the marketplace system. The rewards may alsoinclude transmitting a business query directly to the buyers or sellerswho may have relatively higher self-disclosure integrity ratings.Further, the method 4200 may provide access to the buyer or supplier toutilize the rewards. For example, the marketplace system may add thereward point to an account of the buyer or supplier and may allow thebuyer or supplier to access these reward points only when the value ofthe rewards points exceed a particular threshold value.

The marketplace system may also provide a facility for a reliability orperformance rating. The reliability or performance rating may be basedon transaction history extracted from shipper information. As anexample, and not a limitation, a supplier with a history of timelyshipment may receive a high reliability rating. A formula may be used toreward reliability and performance by allowing higher visibility forsuppliers or buyers with a higher reliability or performance rating.

In addition to providing data services, the marketplace system mayprovide a prospecting facility. The prospecting facility may utilizeshipper information to predict delays and disruptions in futuretransactions. As an example, and not a limitation, a delayed shipment ofparts to a manufacturer may result in that manufacturer being unable toship its product in a timely fashion. The prospecting facility mayrecognize the delayed parts shipment and alert the supplier's customersof the upcoming delay. As another example, the prospecting facility mayalert the manufacturer of the impending delay and present options forpurchasing parts from other parts suppliers who are capable ofdelivering replacement parts within a needed timeframe. The prospectingfacility may use a shipper's internal information, such as increasedhiring patterns in certain areas at certain times to predict shippingdelays before they occur. The marketplace system may then rate suppliersbased on their proximity to a potential shipping disturbance and providea buyer with a list of suppliers less likely to be affected by it.

FIG. 43 illustrates an environment 4300 that may assist in evaluation ofa risk to a buyer based on the proximity of buyers to a potentialshipping disturbance. The environment 4300 may include varioussuppliers, shippers and buyers associated with each other to performbusiness transactions and may represent an environment for evaluatingthe impact on buyers of potential shipping disturbance. As shown, theenvironment 4300 includes a supplier, three shippers and three buyers.Buyers 1 and 2 may be more at risk of being impacted by a shippingdisturbance since both are serviced by the same shipper and buyer 3 isserviced by two different shippers. Therefore, buyers 1 and 2 would beconsidered to have a greater proximity to a potential shippingdisturbance than buyer 3.

Buyer risk may also be evaluated based on a supplier's proximity to apotential shipping disturbance. Here, much like for buyers proximity,because supplier 1 ships through two shippers to buyer 3, buyer 3's riskin regards to a shipping disturbance risk is lower than either of buyers1 or 2 since supplier 1 ships through a single shipper to these buyers.There may be many other factors to consider when evaluating supplierproximity to a potential shipping disturbance and may include,reputation of the shipper, jurisdiction from which the supplier isshipping product, experience that a shipper has with shipping productssimilar to those being supplied by the supplier, and the like.

In addition to information services and prospecting services, themarketplace system may provide a bidding facility. A plurality of buyersmay bid for the services of a supplier; likewise a plurality ofsuppliers may bid to fulfill a buyer's order. The bidding facility maycontain an order posting system, where a buyer would post informationrelevant to an order, such as item type, specification, quantity, price,and required delivery date. A buyer's rating may be used to prioritizeits order in the order posting system. A plurality of supplier may thenbid to fulfill the order. The bidding facility may present the bids to abuyer with the supplier's identifying information obscured, but with itshonesty, reliability, and performance rating provided. Such apresentation may allow more price competition among suppliers of varyingsize and having differing name recognition.

A supplier may use the bidding facility to provide information about itsability to deliver a particular item, type of item, or the like. Thesupplier may provide an item specification or description, an availablequantity, location, speed with which it can be shipped, price, and thelike. A plurality of buyers may bid to purchase from the supplier. Thebidding facility may provide the bids to the supplier with the buyer'sidentifying information obscured, but with its honesty, reliability, andperformance rating provided.

Posting a Bid Project in the Marketplace

The methods and systems described herein may facilitate posting aninquiry (e.g. for buying for a product) via a user interface of themarketplace system. Posted inquiries may enable the provision ofgenerating leads for suppliers, buyers, shippers, and the like. In thecase of a buyer posting a buying inquiry, suppliers may be provided withleads or appropriate contacts for a sales transaction with the buyers.When a buyer wants to place an order for a particular product, he maypost an inquiry regarding the particular type of product, such as arequest for supply, a request for quotation, a request for inventorystatus, and the like.

FIG. 44 illustrates an example of such a user interface for posting abuyer inquiry within the marketplace. In an example, the interface maypresent a form or an information submission section 4400 including aplurality of input fields 4402-4420 that may allow a buyer to post thebuyer inquiry. The input fields may include for example a product namefield 4402 that may be used to provide a title to the inquiry posted bythe buyer. In an example, the product name field 4402 may be used by themarketplace system for performing a search on such inquiries posted bydifferent buyers for example when a supplier may be looking for leadsfor their businesses. The interface 4400 may further include a productspecifications field 4404. The product specifications field 4404 may beused by a buyer to provide further details about the product. Forexample, a buyer of a curtain fabric may provide details likemeasurement and material of the fabric in the product specificationsfield 4404.

The interface 4400 may further include a quantity field 4408 that may beused to specify quantity of the product or number of pieces of theproduct enquired by the buyer. The quantity may be selected from adropdown list in accordance with the illustrated example. The interface4400 may present a product category field 4410 that may be used tospecify the category that the product may belong to. The category may beselected from a dropdown list of categories in an example. Thecategories may include, but are not limited to, agriculture, businessservices, hardware, machinery, packaging and printing, apparel,automobiles, personal care, energy, chemicals, computer hardware andsoftware, electronic components and supplies, environment, fashionaccessories, food and beverage, furniture, health and medical, and anyother such category.

The interface 4400 may also present a supplier location field 4412 thatmay allow the buyer restrict or limit his inquiry search to suppliersbelonging to a defined location. The interface may further present abuying timeline field 4414 that may be used by the buyer to input thetime duration within which the buyer may want to acquire the product.The interface 4400 may also present a field 4418 for product photos suchthat the buyer may be able to provide or upload sample photographs orimages for the product enquired by the buyer. When the buyer has inputall the relevant details about the product, a ‘send inquiry’ button 4420may be used to post the inquiry on the marketplace system. In anexample, posting the buyer inquiry may include storing the informationassociated with the buyer inquiry into a database of the marketplacesystem. It must be appreciated that various other input fields may beincluded in the user interface and present to the buyer depending on therequirements. For example, in some cases the form may be presented indiscrete stages and phases so that a next phase is not presented until abuyer has filled in all required details for a current phase. Thesubsequent phases may be determined and presented accordingly based onan input provided by the buyer in a previous stage. For example, if abuyer qualifies the product as a flower, an input field requiringselection of a particular color of the flower may be presented. In thismanner, the input fields may not remain constant but may dynamicallychange based on stage-based inputs by the buyer. Therefore, themarketplace may present a dynamic user interface to access and interactwith the marketplace system.

The inquiries posted by the buyers may generate and get converted intoleads for the suppliers associated with the marketplace system. This maybe automated within the marketplace system by proactively reaching outto the suppliers who may be capable of completing the inquiry based onassociating information in the inquiry and in the various supplierprofiles. The information collected by the marketplace system throughthe user interface may be shared with the suppliers through a separateinterface of the marketplace system so that only the selected suppliersmay receive the information. Examples of the separate interface mayinclude automate telephone calls, email, private postings, SMS-likemessages, and the like. While the inquiry may be posted on themarketplace, suppliers who may not be associated with the marketplacesystem may be contacted. Examples include suppliers who may have eithermanufactured or supplied or helped a buyer procure the product or asimilar product in the past. Although profile information aboutmarketplace supplier participants may preferably be evaluated indetermining which supplier to contact, at least because the profileinformation may be validated using the methods and systems describedherein, information available to the marketplace platform, but notnecessarily associated with a marketplace participant may be used toalign suppliers with a buyer inquiry.

Active and Passive Search Ranking

Such inquiries are active and generate broad results; thus, suchinquiries allow buyers to use their own search parameters to acquire keysupplier information, and use such information to decide how to proceed.In an active search, the buyers may themselves be conducting a searchfor a suitable supplier. Likewise a supplier may conduct an activesearch for a buyer. The search for a suitable supplier/buyer may also beimplemented in an alternative, more passive manner using an inquiryprocess. In embodiments, inquirers (e.g. buyers, suppliers, shippers,and the like) may post order/offer details, which may result in anoption to post an inquiry, as described earlier and throughout thispatent application. Posting a buyer inquiry may result in the display ofan inquiry form for a buyer to enter pre-determined, structured data forthe inquiry process to use, such as, but not limited to, quantity, unitselection, buying time frame, uploading the specification for an order,uploading photos of products similar to the desired products. searchesfor products within the marketplace system, specific parameters relatedto pricing, delivery, and the like. The inquiry process may also allowusers to select restrictions or parameters for their orders. The inquiryprocess may use the data taken from the inquiry form to facilitateranking and filtering search results obtained. The inquiry process maybe conducted in conjunction with display of a buyer's inquiry posting sothat all users of the marketplace system may view a buyer's inquiryrequest. Alternatively, the results of the inquiry process's filteredand ranked search may be provided to a buyer, such as for use as arecipient candidate list for receiving the buyer's inquiry request. Inthis manner, the user can have direct influence on which candidaterecipients may receive the details of an inquiry. Additionally, therecipient candidates may be filtered based on the parameters includedwith a user's inquiry. An example of applying an inquiry parameter mayresult in all potential suppliers whose lowest price in the past hasbeen above the median price set for that particular product being rankedlow within the search results or being excluded from the search results.

In embodiments, the inquiry process may include algorithms whichfacilitate matching inquiring buyers with potential suppliers. Theinquiry process algorithms may account for other algorithms available tothe marketplace system such as, but not limited to, supplier bidratings, reputation ratings or entity ratings. A reputation rating maybe used to determine the quality of a supplier. The reputation ratingmay be used to determine the likelihood that a supplier will respond toan inquiry or how likely a supplier will be able to fulfill a buyer'sinquiry, and the like. The reputation rating of a supplier may bedetermined based on algorithms using factors such as, but not limitedto, timeliness of inquiry responses in the past, quantity of pastorders, satisfaction of past transactions, time elapsed betweenacceptance of an order to performance, among others. The reputationrating may also take into account a supplier's behavior in relationshipto others in the geographic area, other companies that sell similargoods, and the like. A buyer may then be presented with a list ofpotential suppliers that have been generated accounting for suchfactors. Buyers may potentially list factors that are important to themand the reputation algorithm may change based on the buyer's needs. Forexample, a buyer who is looking for a quick turnaround for her order maychoose to emphasize the timeliness of inquiry responses, rather than thequality rating of past orders.

Search Inquiry Admin/Sales Interface

Additionally, the inquiry process may include an administrativeinterface for inquiries that may allow support or sales staff managingthe marketplace system to determine matches for a buyer's inquiry.Because data for marketplace participants and generally available datafor all suppliers (including suppliers that are not marketplaceparticipants) is used to provide inquiry search results, the searchresults may be a source of potential new marketplace participants.Therefore non-participant search results may be provided to the supportor sales staff who may then conduct supplemental searches (e.g. forfurther contact details) in order to invite new suppliers to join themarketplace platform. Administrators may contact new suppliers, inputtheir information into the marketplace system, and then recommend thenew suppliers to buyers. The administrative interface may also be usedas an additional layer of quality control, so as to identify and flag ordiscard matches generated by the inquiry process algorithms that may notbe relevant to the inquiry. The administrative interface may also allowan administrator to generate potential matches that the inquiry processalgorithms may have overlooked. Administrators may enter in theinformation of a supplier that the administrator is aware of fromfactors such as past experience. Additionally, the interface may displaystatistics for administrators to view as well, such as, but not limitedto, how many times buyers and suppliers are successfully matched, howmany different suppliers are reviewed before a buyer selects a supplier,what the average rank of a selected supplier is when generated for thebuyer, among others. Such dashboard capabilities may allowadministrators to generate more effective algorithms by leveraging theirwork to better train the algorithms using machine learning or otheralgorithmic techniques and heuristics. These administrator-performedactivities also assure that the quality of performance of platformparticipants is consistent.

Structured Search Data

In embodiments, the inquiry process algorithms may comprise multiplecomponents and take into account multiple factors. The inquiry processalgorithms may comprise a structured data component, such as data thatis captured in the inquiry form described above and elsewhere herein.Such an algorithm may comprise hierarchically structured data stored ina record. Initial information for organizing supplier structured datarecords may be derived when suppliers register with the marketplacesystem platform. When a supplier registers for the marketplace systemplatform, the supplier may be queried to enter data that can be usedwhen searching for suppliers with one of the inquiry process algorithms(e.g. shipment history, contact information, HS codes of productsoffered, and the like). Such queries may facilitate receiving open textdescriptions, may be taken from a drop down list of suitable response,or the like. For example, when a supplier first registers with theplatform, during the registration phase, the supplier may be asked toenter in her location, number of employees, capabilities, businessassociations, previous reviews, and the like. Such information may thenbe stored in a structured record, which may then be searched by theinquiry algorithms. These structured fields may be searched, forexample, according which components are most important to the buyer,whether it be location, reputation, etc. The structured fields may alsobe searched according to predetermined hierarchal parameters. Suchparameters may be derived based on past transactions, market orscholarly data on the predictive efficacy of certain factors, etc. Thehierarchal placement of the structured data may be dynamic. Factors inone industry may be a better predictor of a good buyer/supplier matchthan others. For example, the inquiry process algorithms may placehigher relevance of a supplier's geographical location in relation to abuyer's for the sale of perishable goods. To juxtapose, themanufacturing capacity of a supplier may be given more weight in theinquiry process structured data algorithm for transactions involvingnon-perishable mass production goods.

Free Text (TF-IDF) Search Algorithms

The inquiry process algorithms may also comprise a free text component,which may use methods such as a term frequency-inverse documentfrequency (TF-IDF) ranking function in order to generate a potentialmatch. While TF-IDF statistics have conventionally used to weigh howimportant certain key words are in a corpus, TF-IDF may be used todetermine words or phrases in an inquiry (e.g. in an inquiry form) thatmay be of greater significance. Once such approach includes comparing aninquiry with the inquiries available to the platform to determine howrare or specific a buyer's inquiry is. Such TF-IDF analyses may also beconducted for smaller populations as well, such as for all inquiries inthe buyer's geographic region or in the buyer's specific industry. Theinquiry process TF-IDF analyses may also be compared with generalcorpuses that are publicly available. Such corpuses may include, but arenot limited to, the Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-DayAmerican English (Brown Corpus) and Project Gutenberg. Comparison withsuch general corpuses may allow the inquiry process algorithms toassociate word significance with the marketplace system platform'sratings, as well as the search results from the inquiry processalgorithms. The significance of certain terms determined by such TF-IDFanalyses may be used to determine various ratings as well. For instance,a supplier who has fulfilled orders in the past with large amounts ofsignificant words may be a supplier that is more flexible, and thus mayreceive a higher reputation rating. Term significance may also be usedin conjunction with other factors in order to demonstrate the weightthat should be afforded to such factor when determining a rating. Forinstance, a supplier who receives a negative review that contains alarge amount of significant terms may be a more accurate review than asupplier who receives a review with less significant terms.

The inquiry process algorithms may also use word significance to weighcertain words within an inquiry in order to determine the likelihood ofa successful match between a buyer and a supplier. For instance,industry specific terms are likely more significant than non-industryterms. Analyzing an inquiry for significant terms may reveal suchindustry specific terms and highlight those words of the inquiry as themost descriptive. The inquiry process algorithms may then conduct a textsearch of suppliers within the marketplace system to determine matches.Such matches may be determined by identifying data sources that containthe greatest amount of matching terms with the highest frequency, or anycombination thereof. The inquiry process algorithm may also extractinformation from other data sources, such as websites, in order to matchthe terms in those data sources with the terms provided in the inquiry.The scrapped data extracted from such websites may also be put intostructured hierarchical order similar to the structured inquiry formdata. Such data may be preserved and stored so as to inform the qualitycontrol of the inquiry process algorithms.

Inquiry Related Alerts

The inquiry process may also alert users based on the user's own inquiryor other inquiries. Numerous types of alerts may be delivered to a userto reflect any information that may be related to an inquiry. Suchalerts may be delivered during the inquiry process, immediately afterthe inquiry is submitted, or after some time has passed since theinquiry is submitted. For example, a user may be alerted about badweather conditions if the user requests delivery to a particular regionat a particular time. Such alerts may be displayed in any of variousmanners known to the art, such as, but not limited to, a pop up. Othersuch alerts may inform a user that their inquiry may be one of many fora similar product or similar order or that suppliers may be limitedbased on the user's inquiry. For instance, if there is a shortage ofmaterial X and suppliers have already committed to other shipments, analert may be delivered to a user suggesting that they alter the inquiryto allow for higher prices or lower quantity. Alerts may also be givento a user when a similar inquiry is fulfilled by a certain supplier orupdate a user of supplier's recent performances. A user may also receivean alert when new suppliers are available or if new matches have joinedthe marketplace platform, among other events that may be useful to auser.

Suppliers participating in the marketplace system may provide bids forsupplying the products as specified by the buyers in their buyerinquiries. The buyer inquiry information, along with past supplierand/or buyer transaction data as well as data from one or more otherdata sources (e.g. data scrapped from the Internet) may be used forrating a supplier bid for a buyer inquiry. Therefore, the marketplacesystem may be included or be associated with to a bidding facility forallowing the suppliers and buyers to bid through the marketplace system.

Rating a Supplier's Bid

FIG. 45 illustrates an example of a user interface 4500 that may displaya profile of a company 4502 that may be associated with the marketplacesystem. The profile of the company may be created and maintained basedon information generated from a plurality of data sources. These datasources may also be used for rating a supplier bid. The data sources mayinclude a customs data source 4504, business data sources 4508-4518 suchas Dun and Bradstreet 4508, Experian 4510, Data.com 4512, CorpWatch4512, or any other such data sources. The plurality of data sources maybe mined to gather past transactions to be used for rating a supplier'sbid for a particular product. For example, the bid of a supplier whosepast transaction data indicates that the supplier has previously donebusiness with the buyer who placed the request (or an affiliated companyor even a competitor) may be rated higher than bids of other supplierswho may not have done business with the buyer in the past.

Market Place Comm—Augmenting Comm with Buyer/Supplier Related Data

FIG. 46 illustrates an example of a user interface 4600 displaying abuyer inquiry related to a product. As discussed in conjunction withFIG. 44, a buyer can post a buying inquiry to submit details about theproduct required by the buyer. The buyer inquiry may then feature in“Buyer Inquiries” search results of a supplier. Using the results of thesearch, a supplier may then contact the buyer. A “Buyer Inquiry” searchresult may be elaborated as shown in FIG. 46 which shows a buyer inquiryrelated to an exemplary product “Active Fabric”.

As was discussed in FIG. 44, the input details provided by the buyerduring submission of details about the buying inquiry are stored in themarketplace system and appear in the form of a buying inquiry displayinterface 4600 shown in FIG. 46. For example, the inquiry may includedetails about the product, its title 4602, its specification 4604,quantity of the product needed by the buyer 4608, timelines forprocurement 4610 and delivery of the product, seller regions 4612, andalso sample photographs if provided by the buyer. In some cases, thebuyer may use a native language while submission of the details in theinquiry using the interface 4600 as shown in FIG. 44, but themarketplace system may translate the details into one standard languageand store it in the system. The buyer inquiry may for example alsocommunicate details about the translation and original versus translatedinquiries in the interface 4600 shown in FIG. 46.

The product specifications 4604 may further elaborate on the productenquired by the buyer. For example a buyer of the active fabric may wantto procure only cotton or silk or any other specific type of fabric atthe time of posting the buying inquiry. The buyer may also specify thequantity 4608 of product. The information posted in the buyer inquirymay then enable a supplier of the cotton who may be able to provide thedesired amount of cotton to the buyer to contact the supplier. The buyerinquiry may also specify the timeline 4610 such as a month within whichthe buyer may want the order to be fulfilled. In an example, the buyermay want only the suppliers within a particular region to provide theproduct. For example, a buyer may want a particular quality of cottonavailable in a particular region and so may communicate the preferencethrough the interface in the buying inquiry The buyer inquiry may alsoinclude buyer's contact information. This information may be used byprospective suppliers to contact the buyer.

In this way, the marketplace system may provide a platform combining thedata with communication information. The platform may enable both sides,such as a buyer or a supplier to find each other. Thus, by this way, theplatform may allow connection of buyers to sellers, sellers to buyers,buyers to buyers, sellers to sellers for a variety of purposes, such asto facilitate a due diligence process involving search, introduction,and the like. Additionally, the marketplace system may require buyers orsuppliers to be proactively looking for information about each other, inorder to carry out a business transaction. This may requirecommunication between the buyers and suppliers for getting data, such asphone numbers, email addresses, Skype handles or any other contactinformation to enable communication to happen between the buyers andsuppliers.

Bid Facility Ratings

In addition to using supplier related data to rate a supplier bid, theplatform may facilitate rating suppliers, buyers, bids, offers,requests, and platform-based communications among participants using awide range of data sources and rating techniques. Buyers may beinterested in receiving bids from suppliers in a ranked order based onrating of the supplier, the bid, etc. Likewise, suppliers may wish toreceive requests from buyers in an order that presents the requests fromthe highest ranked buyers first. In looking at a request/offer/bidprocess from a buyers perspective, a buyer may want to compare bids fromdifferent suppliers as well as compare bids over time (e.g. comparetoday's bid from supplier x to last weeks bid from supplier x). With acomprehensive rating system coupled to the bidding facility describedherein, dynamic rating of buyers, suppliers, bids, offers, requests, andthe like may be beneficially applied to ensure that all participantshave access to quantitative assessments during the request/offer/bidprocess. Examples of bid facility rating may further include determininga rating of a request (bid) posted by a buyer (supplier) based on thebuyer's (supplier's) overall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating) that mayrepresent a composite rating based on an aggregation of a wide range ofdata sources as described herein. Likewise, a supplier may be ratedbased on his performance in the biding facility (e.g. few bids but highacceptance rate vs. large number of bids and low acceptance rate). A bidto supply a product at a particular price can also be rated by comparingthe particular price to estimated and/or actual pricing of the productas reflected in the transaction records and other data sourcesaccessible by the platform. If a supplier offers to sell a product at$100, but the going price for the product as produced by an Internetcrawl is $87, the bid may be ranked low. Likewise, if the transactionalrecords available to the platform (e.g. customs transaction records,private shipper records, participant reported pricing) indicate thatrecent transactions for this product priced out at $114, then the bid islikely to be ranked high. These are merely examples and any othercombination of participant activity and data sources can be processedand/or combined to result in a rating/ranking of requests/offers/bids,requestors, offerers, and bidders. What follows are further examples,descriptions of rating methods, use scenarios, and the like of combininga rating engine with a bid facility within the presently disclosedplatform. Initially we will consider a bid/offer/request rating facilityfor rating requests, offers, and bids. However, the informationdisclosed herein may apply equally to rating a bidder, supplier,offerer, requester, buyer, and the like. Examples of such entity ratingbased on bids/offers/request are also depicted below.

The methods and systems provided herein may comprise a facility forrating a participant's offer/request, such as a supplier bid. Asmentioned above, a bid/offer/request rating facility may use customsdata and business data sources in order to gather information in orderto rate a bid/offer/request for services, a particular transaction, aproduct, and the like as may be communicated within the bid facilitydescribed herein. Such a bid/offer/request facility may interact and/orobserve a participant's interactions with the marketplace system inorder to inform the generation of a bid/offer/request rating for anygiven participant. The bid/offer/request rating facility mayadditionally examine other transactions that may be facilitated by themarketplace system or may be known to the marketplace system (e.g. otherbids, similar bids/offers/requests, customs data, private shipper data,public transaction data, and the like). From this data, informationabout the quality of a participant's specific bid/offer/request may begenerated and made available to the participants along with a generalparticipant rating. For example, Supplier A manufactures baseball capsand has a well documented history of two week delivery. Supplier Bmanufactures baseball caps and has delivered its products in as littleas two days. Buyer C in Chicago, Ill. requires an order of baseball capsby the end of the current week and places a request with the marketplacesystem, distrubuting it to all participants. Both Supplier A andSupplier B submit bids via the marketplace. Though Supplier A may have ahigher reliability and performance rating than Supplier B, (e.g. asrepresented in the supplier Overall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating)) inthis specific instance, Supplier B may be in a better position tofulfill this specific request simply because the required time fromrequest to order delivery highly favors Supplier B. Thus, thebid/offer/request rating facility may provide a higher bid rating forSupplier B than Supplier A. Alternatively, a bid may be rated on avariety of aspects of the bid. Further in this example, Supplier A's bidmay be rated lower that Supplier B's bid with respect to deliverytiming, whereas its quality rating might be higher that Supplier B's.Therefore, the bid for Supplier A might have a split rating; high forquality and low for delivery as a function of historically not meetingthe timeframe required in the specific request to which the bid is aresponse.

A bid/offer/request rating facility may review numerous rating factorsin order to generate a bid/offer/request rating. Much of the data thatmay influence rating factors may be readily available to be aggregatedby the marketplace system, including data that may be derived fromparticipant's other ratings. Factors such as recommendations, productquality rating, customer service rating, timeliness of delivery rating,language skills ratings, sample-making ability, respect for IP rating orany other customer generated rating may be collected after everytransaction, in order to inform the quality of a participant's nextbid/offer/request. In a non-limiting example, the qualitative commentsof past customers may be vetted for establishing confidence as a viablesource such comments and transformed into quantitative representations,such as positive vs. negative ratings, ratings represented by stars,etc., in order to incorporate customer feedback of a participant infuture bid/offer/request ratings. Such information about the quality ofgoods or services that a participant provides may be obtained throughthe marketplace system, or through non-system related entities such asbond rating agencies, credit rating agencies, business rating agencies,social network rating organizations, business data sources, etc. Thisinformation may be weighted to favor more credible sources, such astrusted organizations or reviews with a large amount of feedback.Techniques for obtaining, weighting, and using information fromthird-party sources are described for supplier and buyer ratingsthroughout this document. Those techniques may well apply here.

A participant's past performance and interaction with the marketplacesystem may generate sufficient data to inform a bid/offer/request ratinggenerated by the bid/offer/request rating facility. For example aparticipant's particular interaction with the marketplace system, suchas periods of inactivity or increased activity may signal stability orinstability, thus resulting in higher or lower bid ratings,respectively. Likewise, past bid/offer/request behavior may be used bythe bid/offer/request facility in order to generate ratings for currentbids/offers/requests. The bid/offer/request rating facility may examinefactors such as, but not limited to, the total number ofbid/offer/requests made by a participant, the number of unsuccessful orsuccessful bid/offer/requests made by a participant, the number ofbid/offer/requests made by a participant in relationship to the value ofitems shipped, and the like. In an example of using bid/offer/requestbehavior and results, if bids to provide a service or source a producthave historically been accepted when the bid is below a threshold price,then bids that are at or below this threshold may be rated more highlythan bids that are far above this measured threshold. Factors such asvolume, delivery timing, and other terms specified in the request mayalso be used to impact the rating of a bid. These factors may beexamined in relation to a participant's own transaction record toidentify trends; or, these factors may be examined in relation to otherparticipants's transactional records. Furthermore, these factors may beexplored in relation to certain segments of the participant population,such as, but not limited to, competitors, substitute goods/serviceproviders, current bids/offers/requests for similar transactions orproducts, bids/offers/requests for the entire platform,bids/offers/requests for the participant's geographic region, etc. Suchbid/offers/requests may be examined by reviewing data points such asprice, amount, or any other identifiable metric. For example, a bidderwho has increased his proposed bid value by 10% from an identical pasttransaction might receive a higher bid ranking when market averages forthe bid item/service indicate an increase of 15% from an identical pasttransaction might be expected. Information may be obtained throughvarious sources, such as, but not limited to customs data that mayinclude item and cost information. Such information may be used tocompare a bid/offer/request to an estimate of what a participant hasbeen valuing its items in the past, or how other participants valuesimilar items.

Participant's interactions with each other within the marketplace systemmay also generate data for the bid/offer/request rating facility.Satisfaction of past agreements between a particular bidder and offeror,past incidences where performance was breached, either facilitated bythe marketplace system or taking place independent of the marketplacesystem, responsiveness to communications, time to performance, and othersimilar factors may all be taken into consideration when determining abid/offer/request rating. Such factors, along with other factors, mayalso be weighted to reflect the value of the performance to the bidder.For example, the bid/offer/request rating facility may consider if abidder breaches more when there is substantially more at issue.

The bid/offer/request facility may additionally examine business factorsin order to determine a specific bid rating such as, but not limited to,a participant's country context, business legitimacy (includingregistration and certifications), or public recognition. For example, aparticipant with a history of receiving higher bid ratings may belocated in a country that is currently experiencing political upheaval.Although the participant's record with the marketplace system hashistorically been positive, current events may risk resulting in reducedquality of performance (e.g. uncertain delivery timing, surcharges forexport, and the like), thus lowering the participant's bid/offer/requestrating on its current bids. Nonetheless, public recognition and aparticipant's reputation may generally increase a participant'sbid/offer/request rating. Similarly, factors such as a participant'sinternational and domestic track record with customers may be taken intoaccount by the bid/offer/request rating facility in order to generate arating, or a plurality of ratings for a bid/offer/request. The trackrecord may derived from data such as the amount of global experience aparticipant has, the caliber of customers that a participant normallydoes business with, and customer loyalty, to name a few. This trackrecord may be compared to other vendors that operate in similar marketsor that are based in the same area. In this way, a bid/offer/request maybe rated on a variety of factors, such as price, delivery, reputation,customer caliber, and the like. Such a multi-dimensionalbid/offer/request rating may help participants better evaluate a bidbased on factors that are of most significance. In an example of amulti-dimensional bid/offer/request rating, a buyer may place a requestfor supply of a product and the request may be rated low for price (thebuyer is requesting to pay below market), high on reputation (on-timepayment and order consistency are historically high for this buyer), andaverage on delivery (the buyer is asking for delivery within a typicalleadtime). A supplier who is very price sensitive may choose to not makea bid in response to such a request. A supplier who has less sensitivityto price may consider the reputation of the buyer as most important fordoing business and therefore may place a bid in response to thisrequest. Other rating dimensions are possible and contemplated herein.

The bid/offer/request facility may use data from a participant'sfinancial performance, such as, but not limited to, revenue and profitlevels over periods of time, financial trends over periods of time,assets, liabilities, inventory levels, cash flow, cash on hand, cashdevoted to operating/investing/financing, as well as other financialdata in order to rate a bid/offer/request. This data may be obtainedthrough public sources or through other credible sources. For example, arequest or order from a participant with low cash on hand may be ratedlower than suppliers with a significant operating cash inflow. Likewise,in a similar non-limiting example, a bid from a bidder who shows aninvesting cash outflow due to a purchase of new equipment may be ratedhigher than other bidders with older, depreciating equipment. Further inthis example, participants who are found to have investing cash outflowmay be further analyzed, such as by reviewing shipping and/or customsrecords that show receipts by the participant to determine what aspectsof the business is receiving investment.

The bid/offer/request rating facility may use financial valuationmetrics to determine bid/offer/request ratings such as, but not limitedto, a firm's debt to equity ratio, P/E ratio, quick ratio, ROE,enterprise value, or other similar valuation metrics. Thebid/offer/request rating facility may additionally use a participant'sbudget or earnings in order to provide a bid/offer/request rating. Thebid/offer/request rating facility may additionally access data about thesize of a participant, such as market cap and market share along withothers in order to generate a rating. These metrics may be obtainedusing publicly accessible means or credible private sources such as, butnot limited to, financial websites, Bloomberg terminals, and the like.The bid/offer/request rating facility may analyze this data eitherindependently or in accordance with expectations or forecasts in orderto generate a rating. For example, a supplier with a higher market sharemay receive a higher bid rating than a supplier with lower market share.Similarly, a company who recently fell significantly short of earningsforecasts for the past three quarters may receive a lower bid value thana company who has consistently met financial expectations over the pastyear, as the poor earnings may reflect instability within the company.

The bid/offer/request rating facility may use a participant'sorganizational form in order to determine a participant'sbid/offer/request rating. The facility may, but is not limited to,consider whether the participant is a sole proprietorship, partnership,corporation, limited liability partnership, limited liabilitycorporation, S-corporation, or other forms of organization. Thebid/offer/request rating facility may additionally consider factors suchas whether a corporation is public or private, whether a privatecorporation is closely held, the number of shares a corporation issued,the number of shares outstanding, price of shares, or any other similarfactor. Additionally, in embodiments, the bid/offer/request ratingfacility may consider human resource factors, such as whether there arenew hires within the participant, worker turnover rate, board memberturnover rate, and the like, in order to determine a participantcompany's health or stability. For example, a company with high workerturnover and is a sole proprietorship may signal a company's internalstruggles, thus leading to a lower bid rating than a publicly heldcorporation with stable management.

The bid/offer/request rating facility may use data taken from aparticipant's location in order to determine bid rating. The tax levelsat various locations, whether a company has multiple locations, howlarge the company's subsidiaries are at its different locations and theorganizational form of the subsidiaries may be taken into account inorder to generate a bid/off/request rating. For example, a supplier whohas a subsidiary close to the location of the requesting participant mayreceive a higher bid rating than other bidders simply becauseinformation about that supplier may be more easily obtained or shippingcosts and risks of nonperformance may be dramatically reduced for thatsupplier.

In embodiments, the bid/offer/request rating facility may use data froma participant's organizational/operational structure in order togenerate a bid rating. The facility may examine factors such as, but notlimited to, whether a participant's organizational structure allows foreconomies of scale or scope, whether a company is vertically orhorizontally integrated and to what degree, or whether a company hasexisting production/manufacturing agreements with others in themarketplace. For example, a clothing company that owns a significantportion of its supply chain may result in a higher bid rating becausethere is less risk of a dispute between the clothing manufacturer andthe distributor.

In embodiments, the bid/offer/request rating facility may use dataderived from the quality and nature of a firm's research and developmentin order to generate a bid/offer/request rating. The bid/offer/requestrating facility may examine factors such as, but is not limited to, thestate of the participant's IP program, whether a participant iscurrently developing new manufacturing technology, a participant's IPlicensing programs, or the state of technology of a participant withrespect to its competitors. Clues for such R&D nature may be gatheredfrom public patent filing records in the participant's home jurisdictionand/or the USPTO, press releases, transaction records that show theparticipant as a buyer of products from a supplier of advancedtechnology products (e.g. manufacturing systems) that are directlyaligned with the participants business/operations. For example, aclothing supplier that is determined to be using state of the artstitching technology and/or state of the art logistical software mayreceive a higher bid rating. The use of these factors by thebid/offer/request rating facility to generate a rating may varydepending on the nature of the request, however. For example, thehigh-tech clothing supplier in the previous example may be given a lowerbid rating if the requesting participant requests hand-stitched jackets.

In embodiments, the bid/offer/request rating facility may use data abouta participant's legal activities in order to generate abid/offer/request rating. The facility may examine factors such as, butnot limited to, a participant's litigation or licensing record, recentacquisitions or divestments, whether the participant is a parent companyor is a subsidiary, whether the participant's property is encumbered, orwhether the participant recently issued an IPO. For example, a supplierthat regularly engages in litigation with others may receive a lower bidrating than a supplier that has never been inside a courtroom. Thebid/offer/request rating facility may similarly use data about aparticipant's governmental and regulatory interactions, such as, but notlimited to, whether the participant relies on government grant money forfunding, whether the participant is affected by a government's decisions(i.e. the sequester), or whether the participant's practicesmeet/exceed/fail government or industry standards. For example, ifSupplier A receives a substantial portion of its funding from governmentgrants and the government announces an initiative to promote SupplierA's industry, Supplier A may receive a higher bid rating thatcompetitors that do not receive the same funding from the government.Similarly, Supplier A may receive a lower bid rating if the governmentcuts back on spending.

In embodiments the bid/offer/request rating facility may use data from aparticipant in terms of how the participant categorizes its products inorder to determine bid/offer/request rating. For example, a supplierwhose top selling product matches a buyer's request may receive a higherbid rating than others. Even if a buyer requests a product that is notthe top seller for the supplier, if the requested product from thesupplier is more popular (e.g. based on transaction records available tothe platform) than the same product from competitors of the supplier,the supplier's bid for the product may still be rated highly.

In embodiments, the bid/offer/request rating facility may use factorsthat cannot be substantially influenced by a participant's current orpast performance. Such factors may include financial factors such as,but not limited to, the industry's financial performance, financialperformance of competitors, the financial performance of complementaryfirms, substitute firms, or entities in the supply chain, M&A activitywithin the industry, the change of market share or size of a participantin relation to others within the industry, or how other companies meetindustry projections. Other third party factors that thebid/offer/request rating facility may account for may be pendinggovernment legislation or governmental action, political climate,quotas, embargos, increase or decrease of duties and tariffs, orreorganization of a government (including austerity, etc.). Thebid/offer/request rating facility may also account for impossibility ofperformance due to factors such as war or armed conflict, weatherdisasters, theft, or other types of force majeure events. For example, asupplier with a good reputation and excellent quality and reliabilityratings may be given a lower bid rating simply because delivery mayinvolve shipment through a sea route that is frequently patrolled bypirates.

The bid/offer/request rating facility may use publicly available sourcesto trigger rating changes of a bid/offer/request, such as, but notlimited to, press releases, financial statements of public companies,news articles, independent financial reviews, etc. The bid/offer/requestrating facility may additionally use information already obtained orsubmitted to the marketplace system such as customer reviews, priortransaction data, customs data, etc. in order to generatebid/offer/request ratings.

In embodiments, and in FIG. 44 the bid/offer/request rating facility mayuse several triggering data points in order to generate abid/offer/request rating that is relevant to a specific transaction or aspecific participant. In embodiments, the bid/offer/request ratingfacility may examine a bid/offer/request to detect keywords used by aparticipant to further trigger or guide the bid/offer/request ratingfacility. The keywords detected in a request may be used to triggerratings of response bids. The rating facility may use the detectedkeywords to configure a bid assessment template that may be used toguide the evaluation of response bids. For example, Buyer X wishes toobtain 50 pairs of jeans within the next two weeks and posts a requestwithin the marketplace system with the specification “50 pairs of jeans,FOB required, delivery in 14 days.” The rating facility may parse thisrequest and find keywords such as “FOB”, “delivery” in “14 days”,quantity of “50”, requested item “jeans”. The rating facility may gatherinformation triggered by these keywords to assist in rating this requestand subsequent reply bids. Examples of gathered information may includehistorical data on requests and bids relating to “jeans”; shippingrecords (e.g. customs records) for “jeans”; synonyms and related wordsfor “jeans” (e.g. denim, dungarees, etc); market data for small ordersof jeans, and the like. Several suppliers reply to this request bysubmitting bids, and from this information and the keywords detected,the bid/offer/request rating facility may then generate a rating foreach reply bid using the information available. The bid/offer/requestrating facility may examine profiles and other information about thesuppliers who submitted bids (the bidders) to see if any of the bidders'top products are jeans, whether bidders frequently ship small orders ofjeans, whether the bidders have traditionally employed FOB as theirmethod of delivery, the average time of delivery, whether delivery isconsistently made before a deadline, if the bid submitted deviates fromthe bidder's past bids, as well as potentially a multitude of otherfactors described herein in order to generate a bid rating. Thebid/offer/request rating facility may additionally acquire informationabout each of the bidders irrespective of the actual bid response, suchas the bidder's rating, financial stability, etc. The bid/offer/requestrating facility may base evaluation of bid quality on bidder independentdata, such as the historical transactional pricing of denim textileshipments, zipper shipments, and other component transactional historyor even of jean shipments in the past, both larger and smaller than therequest made by Buyer X. In embodiments, keywords may be more easilyascertained when more information is filled out in the request form4400, with direct fields that may be populated by a participant. Forexample, if Buyer X wished to request 50 pairs of jeans for delivery FOBwithin 14 days, the Buyer may choose to download or access aninformation submission section 4400 from the marketplace system. Severalof the fields may already be populated with default information obtainedabout Buyer X, such as, but not limited to, the name of the receivingentity, the shipment location, along with others. Other fields may bepopulated by the requesting Buyer X depending on the bid, such as, butnot limited to, the category of product or service requested 4410, thebuying timeline 4414, the quantity requested 4408, or any otherrequirements of the requesting Buyer X. Similarly, Supplier A, whowishes to fulfill Buyer X's request may choose to submit a bid in prose,such as “Will fulfill order of 50 pairs of Jeans to be delivered toBuyer X location FOB within 5 days at $2 per pair.” In embodiments,participants submitting bids may also choose to submit bids in otherforms, such as, but not limited to, populating pre-determined fields ofan information submission section 4400. By using forms withpre-determined fields, the fields may be assigned to various keywords toimprove rating delivery.

In embodiments, the bid/offer/request rating facility may use severalmethods known to the art in order to extract data to examine andintegrate the above mentioned factors into the generation of abid/offer/request rating. In embodiments, the bid/offer/request ratingfacility may use algorithms in order to generate ratings. Inembodiments, several different algorithms may be used in order toaccommodate market behavior within different industries. For example,past transactional history may be a more accurate predictor of futuretransactional reliability for producers of toy cars, whereasgovernmental regulation and changing weather patterns may be the mostimportant consideration for wheat farmers. Thus, bids and requests fortoy cars may employ algorithms that completely ignore data about weatherwhereas requests for wheat may trigger algorithms that weigh weather orother force majeure concerns more heavily. Such algorithms may bederived using any of the methods currently known in the art. Inembodiments, the bid/offer/request rating facility may use past data toinform the creation of a rating algorithm, by using information such astrends or even the success/accuracy of past algorithms to determinewhich factors may more accurately predict future transactionalreliability, behavior, or value. In a non-limiting example, thebid/offer/request rating facility may use such an algorithm to determinea type of bid rating:BR=∛(PQR*TR*GSR)+(participant bid price—median bid price)

-   -   BR=Bid Rating    -   PQR=Product quality rating    -   TR=Timeliness of delivery rating    -   GSR=Government stability rating

In such an algorithm, the product quality rating, timeliness of deliveryrating, and government stability rating may be determined throughparticipant or other user reviews on the marketplace system. Such analgorithm favors participant feedback and price of a participant's bidover other factors to determine the rating of a bid.

Suppliers and buyers who may be participants in the marketplace systemof the present invention may participate in the bid/offer/requestmarketplace environment in a variety of ways. Exemplary participationmay include a buyer submitting a request for a product or service; asupplier bidding to satisfy the buyer's submitted request; a supplieroffering to provide a product or service; a buyer bidding to accept thesupplier's offer; and the like. In addition to the large variety of datasources, rating algorithms, and techniques for rating bids, offers, andrequests. These bids, offers, requests, and the responses associatedtherewith (or lack thereof) may further inform a rating for suppliersand/or buyers. Much like the use of historical transaction data (e.g.customs data) can inform a Overall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating) for asupplier and/or buyer, request system historical data can play a keyrole as well. Each buyer request, supplier offer, and bids by eithersupplier or buyer may initiate a rating process that capturesinformation about the bid/offer/request and leverages it to guideaggregation of data from other parts of the inventive system (e.g.transaction history, shipper data, third-party data, other platformgenerated data, and the like) to form a basis for rating the buyer,supplier, or both involved in a request/offer/bid process. In anexample, a buyer may place a request to purchase 100 items at a price P.The platform may broadcast this request to all participants.Alternatively, the platform may analyze the request and identify asubset of all participants to most likely to benefit from receiving therequest. The platform may at least temporarily limit distribution ofsuch a request to the identified subset. Alternatively, the platform mayuse the information associated with the identified subset to rank,weight, and/or filter responses as part of rating the request, therequester (e.g. buyer), and the like. In this way, responses to theoffer can be evaluated based on the likelihood of fit between thebuyer's request and the supplier.

The requester (e.g. a buyer) may already have a rating within theplatform (e.g. an Overall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating)) and that ratingor another rating may be created and/or updated based on aspects of therequest and responses thereto. Any aspect or any combination of aspectsof the request can be targeted by the rating facilities and methodsdescribed herein to form a rating of the requesting buyer. In an exampleof using an aspect of the request to rate the requestor (e.g. buyer),the platform may have access to market data (e.g. through public andprivate supplier and shipper records) that may indicate a current marketvalue range for an item. Depending on this market value range andaspects of the request (e.g. the requested price and/or the requestedquantity) the requester may be rated positively if the request is with acertain portion of the market value range (e.g. the high end of therange). Conversely, the same requester could be rated negatively if therequested price to be paid for the items is near or below the low end ofthe market value range.

The requester (e.g. a buyer) may be rated based on responses providedwithin the platform to the request. If a large number of supplierssubmit a bid in response to the request, and or the existing qualityrating of the suppliers who do respond is high, then the requester maybe rated highly for this bid. If the responses to the request arefavorable (e.g. they include a counter offer), the requester for thisbid may be rated higher than if the majority of the responses are notfavorable (e.g. the responses indicate “no-bid” or require significantlyhigher quantities or costs). These factors are merely exemplary and arenot meant to limit the scope of such a requester rating.

Any such request-specific requester rating may be integrated into arating for the buyer that encompasses other factors, such as on-timepayment, order stability, and a wide range of other factors that maycontribute to an entity rating (e.g. a overall rating, such as a Panjivarating). Therefor, a buyer's Overall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating) may beimpacted by request and response activities of a bid/offer/requestmarketplace as described herein.

Suppliers may be rated based on their measurable behaviors in thebid/offer/request marketplace system. Somewhat similarly to leveragingbuyer requests and the responses thereto for rating buyers, supplierresponse to requests (e.g. bids) and unsolicited offers and theresponses thereto may be material in rating a supplier. Bid and offeractivity may be one of several factors attributable to a supplierrating. In an example of bid activity impacting a supplier rating, asupplier who submits bids in response to buyer requests to supplyproducts for which the platform cannot find any prior history of thesupplier shipping a product that is at least similar to the productrequested may be rated lower than a supplier who has a demonstratedtrack record of providing bids on products that he has consistentlyshipped. While an exact match between the requested product and thesupplier's shipment history may be preferred for a positive rating forthe supplier in any specific bid activity, if the supplier can becharacterized as providing clothing for children (e.g. based ontransaction records accessible to the platform), and the buyer requestsa particular child's item (e.g. a wool sweater), then the rating systemmay detect that the requested item and the supplier's experience aresufficiently similar to avoid detracting from the supplier rating.

Suppliers may also be rated based on how each bid or offer is accepted(e.g. how other participants in the marketplace and/or the requester)reacts to the bid or offer. If a supplier has a solid history of bidsbeing accepted by the requester, then each new bid that is accepted willenforce a high rating for the supplier. Similarly, if a supplier has apoor track record of bid acceptance and/or has little or no bid trackrecords, then each accepted bid will work to increase a supplier'srating as a quality provider.

Supplier offers are similar to buyer requests in that a supplier makesan offer within the marketplace system to provide a product (orproducts) at a price. Accepted offers may increase a supplier rating,whereas unaccepted offers may have no impact or may have a negativeimpact on the supplier rating. A supplier's Overall rating (e.g. Panjivarating) as described herein, may be impacted by ratings of the supplierduring the request/bid/offer activity of the marketplace. The supplier'sOverall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating) may also be impacted by rating ofthe supplier's bids and offers.

FIG. 46A depicts an exemplary rating facility associated with a bidfacility described herein. As can be seen, a wide range of input can beprocessed to generate a rating of a bid, offer, request, buyer,supplier, requester, offer, bidder, and the like. The rating facilityassociated with the bid facility may interconnect with the othersupplier and buyer rating methods and systems described herein, such asa Overall rating (e.g. Panjiva rating) facility.

The marketplace platform described herein may include a messagingfacility (see at least FIGS. 47-50). The ratings, assessment, impact onparticipant Panjiva score, algorithms for ratings, data sources, and thelike that are used to rate bids/offers/requests and participating buyersand suppliers may be applied to messages exchanged among buyers andsuppliers via the messaging facility described herein. In this way, asupplier message may be rated as it is being delivered to a buyer sothat the buyer can, for example, sort the received messages based onsupplier rating, message rating, and the like. In addition, aparticipant may integrate a message rating into an automation of amessage processing capability to facilitate tracking and managingmessages based on perceived value (e.g. higher rated messages).

Marketplace Messaging Capabilities

FIG. 47 illustrates an example of message based communication in themarketplace system. The marketplace system may support communication bysending or receiving messages between buyers and suppliers. The systemmay enable provision of anonymous communication through messages thatmay be accessed using a user interface 4700 including a display portionfor displaying a message section 4702. For example, a buyer may firstdecide to contact a supplier to enquire about their location anonymouslyby sending or receiving messages. Further communication may then beenabled as the buyer or supplier may deem appropriate. In an example,the message section 4702 may enable communication between buyers andsuppliers that may be located across domains and across borders. Themarketplace system may support language translation and currencyconversion features that may enable such communication of currencyconversion and translation. Translation may be performed as a backgroundtask that may support translating messages stored in the inbox, similarto email systems that process rules based on received emails.Alternatively translation may be performed in real-time as part of achat or conference function. In either case, translation may beautomated via a machine translation process.

Data mining within the marketplace may be based on text or other contentpassed through message section 4702 of the user interface. For example,data mined using key terms in messages of a supplier may be scraped andused to classify the supplier on one or more parameters, such as productdelivery quality, timeliness, customers of the supplier, or any otherparameter. In addition to using unicast messages as a source of keyterms for mining data in the marketplace, broadcast messaging may alsobe a source of data mining key terms. For example, when a user, such asa buyer or a supplier sends a broadcast type message to other companies,the text of the message itself may be mined. As a result, terms that maybe important as to the product the user wants to buy or sell may beidentified. The terms may then be matched with buyer or supplier data toestablish a candidate list of recipients for the message. The messagesender may have configured his communication settings to allow themarketplace system to automatically resend the message as a broadcast tothe list of candidate recipients identified by the message mining andrecipient matching process. In addition, the list of candidate suppliers(or buyers) may be displayed to the user for interactively sending themessage to a subset of recipients based on user confirmation ofrecipients. In addition to these automated techniques for matchingrecipients to message content, the message can be analyzed by a humanexecutive to manually find good suppliers that match the buyer'srequirements.

Categorizing messages may also be beneficial to a recipient so themarketplace platform may provide such capabilities. Messages in themessage section 4702 may be categorized as priority messages 4704, inboxmessages 4708, sent messages 4710, trash messages 4712, and the likesimilarly to how an email processing system may execute user definedrules to label incoming email. Message categorization may assist thebuyers or the suppliers to organize the messages effectively so that anylead from the messages may be converted into a complete businessopportunity.

FIG. 48 illustrates an example of a user interface 4800 that may bepresented to a user when the user accesses an exemplary profile of abuyer or a supplier posted on the marketplace system. The companyprofile may be presented to the user in the form of tabs grouped withinthe user interface 4800. As illustrated in the user interface 4800, thecompany profile may include information categorized under tabs such assummary 4802, orders 4804, suppliers 4808, corporate 4810, credit data4812, shipment statistics 4814, generic notes 4818 and contactinformation 4820. Each of these tabs may include detailed informationcorresponding to the tabs and the user may select any of these tabs toretrieve detailed information corresponding to these tabs.

The summary tab 4802 may provide a brief description related to thevarious tabs associated with the profile of the company. As shown inFIG. 48, the summary tab 4802 for Starbucks Trading Co. may includeinformation associated with an aggregate profile 4822 of the company,top product terms 4824 associated with the order tab 4804, and briefinformation on the top suppliers that may be extracted from thesuppliers tab 4804. For example, FIG. 48 illustrates top three suppliersof the Starbucks Coffee Trading Co. The summary tab 4802 may furtherprovide a brief description on shipment statistics 4828 for the companysuch as on a month wise basis. The user may select the shipmentstatistics tab 4814 for any further information associated with theshipment related data for the company. The summary tab 4802 may alsoprovide information regarding data sources 4830 that may be used forretrieving information about the company, a map based display interface4832 that may illustrate the location of the company on the map, andrecently viewed profiles 4834 that may be viewed by the users such asthe buyers or sellers interested in developing business relations withthe company. In a non-limiting example, the summary tab 4802 may alsoinclude other information about the company that may enhance theprovision of providing business opportunities for the buyers andsuppliers. Summary information may be posted by any buyer or anysupplier that may be associated with the marketplace system.

FIG. 49 illustrates an example of a user interface 4900 that may bepresented to a user to disclose enhanced information associated with aprofile of a buyer or a supplier posted on the marketplace system. Asillustrated in FIG. 49, the user interface 4900 may display informationfields that are different than the fields shown in the user interface4800 of FIG. 48. The additional information fields may assist the userto efficiently monitor and communicate with the buyers and suppliersavailable on the marketplace system. In an example, the additionalinformation may be extracted from correspondence information of thecompany available through the profile. In this example, a company A anda company B may communicate with each other over messages to develop orgenerate business relations among each other. The methods and systemsdescribed herein may analyze these messages in combination with otherdata sources to determine that the company A may be a buyer and thecompany B may a supplier. Accordingly, such information may beautomatically extracted to establish a business relationship between thecompanies and the company B may be shown as a supplier on the profile ofthe company A when the user accesses the profile of the company A. In anexample, all of the information about the supplier (i.e., the company B)may be extracted, including correspondence information. Thiscorrespondence information may then be used to provide contactinformation for the supplier such as using the contact tools 4902 andthe contact information 4904. The contact tools 4902 may enable theusers to directly communicate with the company using email, chats andthe like methods and the contact information 4904 may include contactrelated information that may be used by the user to communicate with thecompany. For example, clicking on the “send message” option of thecontact tool 4902 may enable sending a message to the message box of thecompany shown in the user interface 4900 and thus enabling a directcommunication with the company from the profile itself.

FIG. 50 illustrates an example of a message section interface 5000 thatmay be enabled for a profiler, such as a buyer or a supplier, of themarketplace system. As previously discussed in conjunction with FIG. 47,the message section interface 5000 may categorize the messages into aplurality of categories such as a priority inbox 5002, an inbox 5004, asent message box 5008, chat messages box 5010 and a trash messages box5012. The priority inbox 5002 and inbox 5004 may be used to access themessages that may be received by the user of the marketplace system. Inan example, the priority inbox 5002 may facilitate the user to accessmessages that may require user attention on an urgent basis whereas theinbox 5004 may facilitate the user to access remaining messages that maynot require urgent attention by the profiler. The sent messages box 5008may enable the user to access messages that are sent by the user, andthe trash messages 5012 may be used to access discarded or deletedmessages.

The marketplace system may provide an association between data andcommunication to provide an active, data-based communicationmarketplace. This may be achieved by allowing multi-media communication,such as though emails, SMS, chat, voice, video, or any othercommunication means. For example, the message section 5000 may alsoenable storing of chats in the chat messages section 5010. This storedchat information may be used to provide platform wide data enrichedcommunications. For example, data stored in a previous chat orconversation may determined to be relevant to a current chat session andtherefor may be pulled into the active conversation or chat. An activeconversation between parties in the marketplace may be parsed to producea side bar that may be relevant to the communication. The side bar mayinclude, among other things, links to a full detailed profiles of thecompanies involved in the conversation. A number of differently themedsidebars may be produced, such as an informational side bar, abenchmarking side bar, an activity monitoring side bar, and the like.Sidebar examples may include pricing details of the supplier with otherbuyers, range of supplier prices in a particular jurisdiction or country(e.g. the country that is specific to the supplier), and the like.

The message section 5000 may be used to share structured messagesbetween buyers and suppliers. A supplier may then respond by checkingboxes and selecting drop-down menus. Additionally, a set of recommendedquestions for buyers or suppliers may also be provided, which may beautomatically inserted into messages to give the buyers and suppliersgood information about each other. Responses to recommended questionsmay als be used to flesh-out and update existing supplier profile data.Using these recommended questions, the users may give feedback onresponses (such as phone numbers, emails, web, or any other) for thecorresponding messages, compare responses across different suppliers,mine answers to the questions in order to access the accurateinformation that may help the user in performing a business transaction,and the like. For example, the recommended questions and responses maybe facilitate learning about a buyers transaction history.

The message section 5000 may enable message steering to help a user tosteer the communication to a right company, or to a right person, suchas an employee of the right company. The marketplace system may furtherensure that messages are not lost if an intended recipient email addresscannot be confirmed. One such way of preventing lost messages is tosteer them on a per-person basis, where a person may be associated witha “people profile”. A “people profile” may include information such asemployment status, client management experience, contact information orany other such information about a person associated with a company onthe marketplace system. A “people profile” may also include a briefaccount of what the person does in the company, and this information maybe used to perform a micro-level steering of messages within thecompany. That is to say, a message related to product inquiry for aspecific category of product of a company may be steered to the inbox ofthe person who may have already handled inquiries related to thisproduct in the past.

Messages within the marketplace may be scored by examining the messageto identify whether it is a buy request or a sell request, a hot buyrequest, or any other form of request. This may then enable classifyingthe information flowing through the marketplace system into a pluralityof “buckets” or categories, and then ranking the communication for aparticular purpose. In an example, the message scoring may includegetting ratings from a plurality of users of the marketplace system.Alternatively, the methods and systems described herein may analyze aplurality of messages that may be communicated between the users. Themarketplace system may be configured to monitor these messages to derivedata points that may assist the buyers and suppliers to identifycompanies to develop business relations to meet their businessobjectives. In an example, the messages may be used to identify themodes of communication that may result in responsiveness. In an example,the messages may be used as a geographic filter to identify SMS usage ina country versus cellphone usage versus email usage.

Marketplace Features

FIG. 51 illustrates an example of a user interface 5100 that may beshown to a user when the user accesses a website of a company listedwith at least one of a buyer or a supplier available on the marketplacesystem. The user interface 5100 may be configured to display amarketplace website in a first portion 5102 and the website of thecompany in a second portion 5104 of the user interface 5100. In anexample, the website of the company may be displayed to the user on thesame user interface 5100 on which the user may be viewing themarketplace website. As illustrated, a website for a supplier “VF” isshown in the second portion 5104 in the same user interface 5100 onwhich the website of the system is shown. In an example, the user of themarketplace system may be able to navigate to the webpage of thesupplier without leaving the webpage interface of the marketplacesystem. Such a view of an outside website within the marketplaceplatform environment may provide an ease of navigation, enhancedsecurity, greater flexibility, shorter turnaround time and other similaradvantages for looking for supplier information using the marketplacesystem.

FIG. 52 illustrates an example of a user interface 5200 that may beshown to a user when the user wants to create a new project on themarketplace system. The user interface 5200 may include various fieldsfor creating the project that may be used to publish on the marketplacesystem. The user interface 5200 may include a name field 5202 forproviding a title to the project and a description field 5204, which maybe used to provide details about the project. The project creation maybe initiated by a user of the marketplace system for a plurality oftasks that may include by way of example, but not limited to, posting abuyer inquiry, comparison of suppliers, storing user preferences,organizing user data, sending bulk messages to suppliers or any othersuch project task. When a user has entered the desired title anddescription for the project, a create button 5208 may be selected tocreate and publish the project on the website of the marketplace system.In an example, the user may create a project to compare differentsuppliers bidding for the user's product request fulfillment using themarketplace system.

FIG. 53 illustrates an example of a user interface 5300 that may beshown to the user for adding suppliers to the project so that the usermay directly transmit the project details with the selected suppliers.In addition, the interface 5300 may facilitate the user to compare thedata available in the supplier's profile on the marketplace system for aplurality of parameters and accordingly select one or more suppliers.The user interface 5300 may be configured to display a list of recentlyviewed suppliers 5302 for facilitating selection of the suppliers. Inaddition, the user interface 5300 may include a plurality of selectionboxes such as the box 5304, box 5308 and the box 5310 corresponding to aplurality of recently viewed suppliers. Further, links such as a link5312, link 5314 and link 5318 may be provided for the respectivesuppliers as disclosed in the list of recently viewed suppliers 5302.The link may map to the profile of the supplier when the user selectsany one link out of these links. In addition, the user interface 5300may provide an add suppliers button 5320 for adding the plurality ofsuppliers for associating the suppliers with the project.

As shown in FIG. 53, three suppliers, such as Sinha Industries, GazelleEnterprises, and Pan Taiwan Enterprises are associated with therespective selection boxes. The user may select any of the threesuppliers for comparison. As illustrated in FIG. 53, the user may selectthe check boxes 5304 and 5308 to compare the profiles of suppliers Sinhaindustries and Gazelle enterprises respectively. Once the user hasselected the suppliers for the project, the user may click on the addsuppliers button 5318 to associate the suppliers with the project sothat the user may be able to compare these suppliers for the project.Accordingly, the results of comparison may be displayed to the userusing an interface as illustrated in FIG. 54.

FIG. 54 illustrates an example of a user interface 5400 in which theresults of a comparison performed for the one or more suppliers that maybe selected by the user for a particular project. The user interface5400 may include a plurality of buttons such as a send message button5402, a hide companies button 5404, a refresh button 5408, and an exportbutton 5410. The user interface 5400 may also include a plurality ofresult fields such as a company name field 5412, a contact informationfield 5414, a top products field 5418, a top buyers field 5420, a totalshipments field 5422, a last shipment date field 5424, and a notes field5428. The user interface 5400 may also include an option to addsuppliers for comparison itself by typing the name of the supplier in anadd a company text box 5430 and clicking on an add button 5432, or byclicking on a link 5434 to search for a supplier on the marketplacesystem, or by clicking on a link 5438 to add suppliers from one or morerecent searches.

The plurality of result fields may be populated with correspondinginformation for each of the suppliers selected for comparison, such asusing the process discussed in FIG. 53. Populating the result fieldswith relevant information that may be available in the marketplacesystem may facilitate the user to analyze the selected suppliers overvarious parameters. Such a presentation may enable a user to identifyrelevant information for considering a supplier, such as duringselection of a supplier bid for a product. For example, a user may haveposted a request for cotton fabric on the marketplace system andobtained bids from the two suppliers illustrated in FIG. 54. Based onthe results of comparison illustrated on the user interface 5400, theuser may identify that for the supplier with company name SinhaIndustries, Levi Strauss company is one of the top buyers. The user mayconclude that for cotton fabric, this supplier may be better than theother supplier illustrated on the user interface 5400 and may select thebid sent by the supplier with company name Sinha Industries to fulfillto conclude the business transaction. Apart from selecting a supplierfor fulfillment of the bidding request, the supplier comparison may beused for performing other transactions on the marketplace system,including but not limited to, identifying a supplier address, checkingsupplier shipment history, classifying suppliers by product categoriesor any other such transaction. In an example, the information fordifferent suppliers may also include community content data.

Community Content

FIG. 55 illustrates an example of a user interface 5500 for profileinformation that may include community content. The profile informationas displayed in FIG. 55 may include features and components similar tothe features and components as already discussed in FIG. 48. As shown,data sources portion of the user interface 5500 may include communitycontent 5502 that may include information sourced from social mediaplatforms such as social networking sites, micro blogging platforms,blogging platforms, online discussion forums or any other such communitycontent sharing platforms. Inclusion of the community content 5502 inthe profile information may enable maximizing data availabilityregarding the profile for a company on a real-time basis. Additionally,community content 5502 may also indicate user feedback and usercommunities' rating of a buyer or supplier profile on the marketplacesystem. A supplier with more community content 5502 may be consideredmore popular and rated higher for fulfilling a product order as comparedto a supplier with lesser or no community content 5502. In an example,suppliers may leverage the presence of community content 5502 topopularize their profiles among buyers to facilitate enhanced use of themarketplace.

To facilitate enhanced use of the marketplace for suppliers, buyers,service providers, and the like, the marketplace system may provide anadvertising facility. A plurality of suppliers and/or buyers may belisted according to various aspects such as self-disclosure integrity,reliability, performance rating, and other aspects of rating asdescribed herein. Through the advertising facility, a supplier (e.g.with a low rating) may pay a fee to have a sponsored listing appearalongside higher ranked competitors. The marketplace system may normallyexclude suppliers from certain types of searches (e.g. searches that arefee to a buyer), unless the supplier opts in to be included in suchsearches by paying a fee if and when a search is performed that resultsin the supplier being listed. Generally, a supplier may optionally pay afee to have its preferred or branded information displayed when it isincluded in the results of a search. Advertising in the marketplacesystem and elsewhere may be enhanced through the use of private data(e.g. shipper information) by allowing an advertiser to supplementtraditional advertising techniques based on shipment information. As anexample, and not a limitation, when a shipment to a buyer is delayed,and the buyer is looking at similar items within the marketplace system,a plurality of supplier may be notified that the buyer may needreplacement goods (e.g. the buyer may post the need on the marketplaceand the suppliers may respond to that post). A supplier may then presenta special offer to the buyer for a purchase of items that would replacethe delayed shipment. The special offer may be presented in real-time,such as through a banner advertisement, or a targeted search result, andthe like.

In addition to allowing a supplier to manage and augment informationthat may be associated with a supplier profile, a supplier may furtheraugment how its profile is used in the marketplace (e.g. to make itselfmore appealing to a buyer). The marketplace system may assess acharge-per-click fee every time the supplier's profile is clicked by abuyer, or every time a buyer makes a purchase after clicking theprofile, and the like.

The methods and systems described herein may include identification ofpotential customers within an organization based on a specificcriterion. Individuals within a corporation that is a buyer, supplier,shipper, service provider, third-party, or otherwise identifiable in therecords of the systems may be targeted to facilitate offering volumediscounts, promotional codes, recruiting offers, targeted offers, andthe like. In an example of a individual targeting within marketplacesystem as described herein, by recruiting more individuals from withinan organization that is already a member of the marketplace system, thevolume of transactions placed through the marketplace for existingcustomers may be increased, thereby increasing the marketplace'srelevance, revenue, profitability, visibility, and the like.

To facilitate reaching out to additional contacts within knowncompanies, an existing user's business name may be used to search forpotential additional contacts within that user's business.Alternatively, information about individuals (e.g. contact information,addresses, names, and the like) that may be included in the public,customs, private, or semi-private data may be harvested to facilitatecontacting such individuals to promote the features and benefits of themethods and systems described herein.

In addition, information derived from an on-line interaction with auser, such as the user's IP address, browser-related information, andthe like that may facilitate identifying an aspect of the user may beused to offer up to the browser through which the user is conducting theon-line interaction content that is targeted to the user, such as acustomized landing web page, offers, and the like. The informationderived from the on-line interaction may be compared to other availableinformation, such as public customs records, private and semi-privatedata (e.g. shipper data), and the like to look for indications that thederived information is associated with one or more records associatedwith the public, private, or semi-private data. There are severaltechniques described herein for determining information about parties ofa transaction from public transaction records (e.g. customs data). Theinformation determined about parties from the public, private, and/orsemiprivate data may be used to help identify aspects of the userconducting the on-line interaction. Information that may be provided bysubscribers to the on-line platform described herein may also be used tohelp align information about entities (e.g. buyers, sellers, shippers,logistics providers, and the like) captured in the public, private, andsemi-private records with on-line interaction information that may beused to identify aspects of a user. Subscribers may provide emailaddresses, physical addresses, company names, phone numbers, IPaddresses, and the like actively or passively that may be used directlyor in combination with information determined about parties from thecaptured transaction records to help identify an aspect of a user in anon-line interaction.

When an aspect of the user in an on-line interaction is determined to beassociated with a known entity as described herein, the platform mayfacilitate targeting content to the user. In an example, if an emailaddress provided by a user engaged in an on-line interaction with theplatform can be determined to be associated with a buyer entity that isknown to the platform (e.g. from public customs transaction records)then the user may be presented with a web page that includes artifactsassociated with the known buyer entity. In the example, if the on-lineuser's email address is john_smith@panjiva.com, and the transactionrecords (or other records accessible to the platform) indicate thatPanjiva is a buyer entity that purchases widgets, then the user who hasidentified himself as john_smith@panjiva.com may be presented with a webpage that includes widget-specific content. The content may includesuppliers of widgets, other buyers of widgets in the area, widgettransaction summaries, advertisements for widget repair service, widgetinventory service, widget marketing service, and the like. Similarly,because John_smith@panjiva.com has been identified as a new on-line userof the platform and there are other users from the buyer Panjiva alreadyregistered with the platform, john_smith@panjiva.com may be presentedwith an offer that is consistent with new members of an existingsubscriber buyer entity.

In another example, a user's web browser may transmit an IP address instandard electronic communication between a browser and a server that ishosting the on-line platform as described herein. The IP address may beanalyzed and it may be determined that the computer that the user isusing in the on-line interaction is within the range of IP addressesthat have been determined to belong to buyer entity Panjiva. In thisway, without the user taking any action to identify himself or his placeof business, the platform may detect a relationship between the user'sIP address and the Panjiva buyer entity. In these examples, anassociation is made between an on-line user and a buyer entity. Thereare other examples that may allow determination of an aspect of anon-line user based on information derived from the on-line interactionand information provided by other users of the platform even if thoseusers are not associated with an entity for which transaction recordsexist.

Maritime Monitor

FIGS. 56A and 56B illustrate an example of a user interface 5600associated with a maritime search utility of the marketplace system. Themaritime search utility may also be referred to as a maritime monitor.The user interface 5600 may include a geographical map 5602 including aplurality of port icons 5604, a sign up interface 5608 for the maritimemonitor, a portion displaying a port trend data 5610, and a portion 5612disclosing features of the maritime monitor with a learn more button5614. The user interface 5600 for the maritime monitor may be configuredto display shipping port related data that may assist users belonging tologistics industry, shipping companies, international tradeorganizations, freight forwarding industry or any other affiliatedmaritime industry service. For example, the geographical map 5602 may beconfigured to display the plurality of ports icons 5604 on the world mapfor which shipping related data may be available in the marketplacesystem. A user may be provided an option of clicking on the one or moreport icons 5604 to view port related shipping data, such as, no. ofshipments received at the port, top shipping companies, number ofshipments sent from the port or any other. In an example, such portrelated data may provide an indication of the volume of imports andexports to and from the port. This may further be indicative of volumeof imports and exports for the country or geographical region associatedwith the port.

In an example, the port related shipping data may be retrieved using aTwenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TU) technique. The TU technique may includeusing a variety of techniques to get an accurate measure of the size ofa shipment. The measurement may be based on shipping information such ashow long a shipping container is, type of container, and the otherrelated information. In an example, the port related shipping data maybe retrieved using a “Less than Container Loads” (LCL) technique. TheLCL technique may be used in a scenario when a load is shared between aplurality of shipping containers and it may be difficult to locate thosecontainers for calculating shipping data. In another scenario, the LCLtechnique may be used when the containers are re-used.

The port related shipment data such as may be retrieved using TU or LCLtechniques may be used to enable dynamic exploration of the data by theuser. The user may sign-up to the maritime monitor using the sign-upinterface 5608 and search for any port related data. The port relateddata may then be displayed to the user as the port trend data 5610, andis further explained in FIGS. 57A and 57B. Further, once a user maysign-up to the maritime monitor, and search for port data, user queriesfor search may be ranked. Further a search performed using the maritimemonitor may use the user ranking criteria as a filter and display onlythe shipping information relevant to that filter. In an example, themarketplace system may provide a capability to disambiguate the shippingdata available in the marketplace system from the data that may beavailable from the government, such as customs declaration data.

Follow Lander

In an example, the marketplace system may be configured to offerinformation about a company or a person visiting the marketplaceplatform. For example, the marketplace system may be configured toprovide information such as location of the visiting company, geographyassociated with the company, relevant people in the visiting company, orany other related information. The methods and systems described hereinmay first identifying someone from the visiting company who may havelooked at profiles, identifying their IP address and using a database,mapping that IP address to most companies. Further, based on the mappingprocess, identifying the company, whose website IP address may matchwith the visitor's IP address, pulling in data for the company from themarketplace profile, and then presenting that data to the user of themarketplace system. In an example, such a tool may be provided in aproductized version so that companies can vet traffic coming to theirweb sites and blend that into the marketplace data to provide a blend ofweb analytics based on IP address and marketplace data.

The methods and systems described herein may include use of shipment andcustoms declaration data that comes from a private or semi-privatesource on an aggregated basis to protect privacy/confidentiality ofparties while providing information about suppliers and informationabout buyers. Aggregating data within and across a plurality of datasources including public sources, such as customs declaration data, andprivate sources, such as shipper or logistics provider data mayfacilitate and/or improve providing information about suppliers andbuyers while enabling substantial protection of privacy and/orconfidentiality of parties by removing information that may be used toidentify a particular party or parties in transactions. Private sourcesof data, such as shipper data may include private and confidentialinformation about clients and customers of the shipper that may beremoved, masked, or encrypted to prevent the data from being used toidentify third parties. Alternatively, aggregating non-private andnon-confidential data based on various aspects, such as dates,quantities, jurisdictions, schedules (e.g. next day before LOAMdelivery, next day delivery, two day, three day, standard, Saturdaydelivery, same day courier), choice of conveyance (e.g. air, land, sea),charges (e.g. per shipment, per item), payment terms (on account (e.g.credit account, debit account), prepay, COD, post bill, and the like),and many other dimensions of aggregation may facilitate providinginformation and analysis about any of these dimensions and/orcombinations thereof using the methods and systems described herein andelsewhere.

Aggregation across public and private data may facilitate supplementingthe public data with logistics and delivery related information that cansubstantially enhance the public data. In an example, customs data mayidentify a supplier, customs agent or facilitator, buyer or recipient ofa customs controlled shipment, and various details about the customscontrolled shipment. Supplementing this with private or semi-privatedata (e.g. details from a logistics provider handling the shipment forthe supplier) may enable detailed analysis about costs, timing, schedulechanges, and the like. The supplemental data may indicate that ashipment passed through customs with no unexpected delays, yet the buyerrefused to accept the shipment because an incoming inspection processcaused the lot to be rejected. Without this supplemental data, it may bedifficult to determine this aspect of supplier quality from publicrecords alone.

Private or semi-private data may also be used to facilitate validatingpublic data. Public data may include various entry errors and lack ofinformation that, while not necessarily causing significant problems ina customs transaction, may cause challenges to validating theinformation and properly determining details about the transaction (e.g.a supplier may be identified on a customs declaration as the logisticsprovider for the source supplier). By combining private or semi-privatedata (e.g. shipper data), an original source supplier associated withthe customs declaration may be determined. Such obfuscation may beintentional or unintentional, however without the private data, theoriginal source supplier may not be known. Further details may behelpfully determined from private or semi-private aggregated data aswell. In an example, a customs declaration may identify the general typeof material or a count of containers being shipped and a customs value,yet the actual number of items may be missing. Private data may enhancethese values by providing details about the destination (i.e.recipient), and the like.

Likewise, public data may help to validate aggregated private data. IFprivate data is aggregated to remove details about individual shipments,customs data, which includes details about individual shipments, may beused to validate the private data. Customs data may cover a large numberof shippers, whereas private data may be limited to one or a fewshippers. By combining private and public data sources, the aggregatedprivate data can be vetted against the public data to ensure that theprivate data is not in conflict with the public data. If such conflictis found, techniques for resolving the conflict may be employedincluding audits, and the like. Improperly aggregated private data maybe invalidated by comparing it to public records, such as customsrecords.

Private or semi-private data may be aggregated separately from customsdata to provide unique views of activity and trends at a regional level.Such aggregated data may be used to identify shipment related activityfor a country, state, county, city, port, geographic region, preferredshipping route, carrier, and the like. Aggregated data may also beuseful for identifying trends related to shipments or patterns ofshipments for such regions and the like. Private data may includehistorical data that may be used to facilitate providing a prediction orprojection of region-based shipping in the near term and longer termtime frames. In an example, historical data may include shipments from aregion in light of macro-economic data. As new macro-economic dataand/or new regional shipping data is aggregated, upcoming shipmentactivity for a region may be predicted based on the new data. If the newdata indicates an improvement in macro-economics, then shipments for theregion may be predicted to increase.

Macro-economic data may also be used with private, public, andsemi-private data to help identify relationships between these datasources that may help identify potential impact on multiple suppliersthat operate in a region. If macro-economic data support private shipperdata that indicates a decrease in activity for a region, then one canpredict that suppliers, shippers, logistics providers, carriers, and thelike that operate in that region may be similarly affected negatively.This information may be helpful in determining opportunities for buyersand suppliers, such as lower prices, availability of shipping resources,production capability availability, and the like. These and many othertypes of region-based assessments may be done based on aggregatedprivate data.

The methods and systems described herein may include various methods ofhandling shipment related data, such as data ingestion, filtering,normalization, de-duplication, data quality, and the like. Here wediscuss some of these techniques and approaches for handlingshipment-related data from private and semi-private sources.

Normalization of data may facilitate marrying private shipping data withpublic shipping data (e.g. customs declaration and execution records,and the like). Normalization may include normalizing data within aprivate data set (e.g. across the various data sources handled by ashipper or logistics provider). Normalization within and among thevarious private and public data sets may include addressing differencesin formats, fields, codes, and the like. Logistics and/or shipper datamay be somewhat more consistent than public data and/or data fromvarious sources. However, independent of the consistency of a datasource, it may be possible to establish a normalization profile for aprivate data source, or to establish normalization profiles for variousportions of a private data source. These profiles may facilitate use ofthe private data with the public data.

It is generally expected that conflicts among data from multiple datasources will need to be addressed. Conflict rules may be established(e.g. based on a normalization profile, customer preference, historicquality determination of a data source, and the like) that allow theconflicts to be resolved. Conflicts may be resolved in favor of privatedata, public data, or may be based on a triangulation across the two ormore data sets. Such techniques may provide important benefits toquickly and accurately resolving conflicts. In addition, early detectionand determination of a proper conflict resolution approach for a giveninstance of a dataset may substantially improve response time inreal-time based data assessment methods that may provide a user withdynamic ad-hoc assessment of the data sets.

Conflict rules may be based on granularity. Customs or public data maybe more granular than aggregated private shipping records. A descriptionin a private shipper record may be “clothing” while custom data maydescribe the composition of the clothing (e.g. 60% Merino wool, 30%cotton, 10% rayon, and the like including colors, styles, etc. Suchrichness in the data may be valuable for a variety of businesses. Datasets can be assessed based on a dimension of richness as well. Richerdatasets generally may be taken from public data sources (e.g. customsdeclaration data) than from private data sources which may not need suchdetails to properly complete a shipping activity. This may in part bebased on the need for the strict legal enforcement of cross-bordertransfers that public data must support and private data does notrequire.

Triangulation may be performed for any variety of data elements, yetnumeric values (e.g. weight and value) lends itself towardstriangulation. Because a declared value for customs impacts an importtax or duty that may have to be paid by the importer, these maygenerally be considered to be below the actual market or wholesale valueof the contents being imported. Whereas, value that is identified to aprivate carrier (e.g. for insurance purposes) may provide a moreaccurate or at least a value that is equal to or greater than the costof replacing the contents. Such numbers may be triangulated to identifya more likely value. In this way, private data may be more reliable.Weight is a similar dimension that may be suitable for triangulation.Weights may be estimated for customs purposes, whereas shippers basetransportation costs (e.g. fuel) on actual weight. Therefore, privatedata (e.g. shipper data) may be more accurate and/or reliable.

Triangulation

FIGS. 57A and 57B illustrate an example of shipper's data that may beretrieved using a triangulation method. The shipper's data may bepresented in a form of a table 5700 including components of shipmentdata that may be obtained from the marketplace system. The plurality ofcolumns of the table 5700 may represent the type of information aboutthe shipment data that may be obtained. The plurality of columns of thetable 5700 may include a departure date column 5702, a destinationcolumn 5704, a shipper name column 5708, a shipper address column 5710,a booking location column 5712, a bill of lading column 5714, an SCACcolumn 5718, a flight code column 5720, a vessel name column 5722, a USport column 5724, a foreign port column 5728, a column for quantity 5730of shipment, and a column 5732 for indicating weight of shipment. Eachof these columns may represent the information as indicated by thecolumn names. In an example, such a table may be obtained for all theports across a country, such as the US. In an alternate example, variousoptions may be shown in the refinement section 5734 of the display sothat the user may refine the results of the table 5700 depending on theselection of an option from the refinement section 5734.

Private data, particularly destination data, may be particularly wellvetted because a shipper or other logistics provider who is responsiblefor proper delivery and billing will most assuredly have accurateaddresses for shipment destinations. Therefore, private data that isreliable and accurate for destinations, may be used to enhance thepublic data relating to buyers because, for example, destinationaddresses may be linkable to a particular buyer through the private databilling information and the like. Private data may facilitate overcominglimitations of detecting valid data from handwritten forms filled out bynon-native language users, and the like.

The methods and systems described herein may utilize private data suchas shipper's data to analyze trends in shipping for a particularsupplier, buyer, etc. The shipper's data may provide details such as thebuyer and the supplier locations and any specific changes in thetransactions between these locations. For example, from shipper's data,it may be possible to track an increase in supply of “electroniccomponents” from a supplier. This might be useful to understand thegrowth of the supplier and its market reach. Accordingly, the suppliermight be offered details of buyers in the area where the supplier isalready supplying. Similarly, indications of business trends, such asrapid growth, may be used to automatically predict needs based on adetected trend and the methods and systems described herein mayautomatically attempt to fulfill those predicted needs. In an example ofattempting to fulfill predicted needs based on business trendindications, if it is determined that a particular supplier hasincreased its manufacturing capacity threefold in the last three months(e.g. the private shipper data may include a new pricing structure forsubstantially increased shipments that are expected from the supplier),then it may be predicted that the supplier may welcome some potentialbuyers to order products based on the the additional capacity. Likewise,buyers of the products that are similar to those that may be provided bythe increased capacity may be notified of the potential increasedavailability of products.

Private data, such as shipping records, may be rich sources of data forproviding analysis about companies, regions, marketplaces, pricing, andthe like. Natural language processing may be useful in extractingrelevant terms from a set of shipping records that may facilitatecapturing the rich data values. In an example natural languageprocessing may be used to determine which products a company receivesmost frequently. That information may be represented as a tag cloudwhich may be further analyzed to identify information (e.g. shipments)that are trending positive and those that are trending negative. Suchanalysis may help with identifying areas of growth and new businessopportunities that may extend beyond the individual buyers and/orshipper data. Existing and new supplier profiles may be enhanced byusing the information gathered with natural language processing from aset of shipping records (e.g. private shipper records) and the trendinformation derived there from (e.g. analyzing the tag clouds). Inaddition to any public data records (e.g. customs transaction records)that may exist on a supplier, the private shipper records may facilitatecapturing domestic shipping transactions, transactions that appear inpublic records as occurring between third-parties, and the like andassociate them with a supplier thereby improving supplier profiles,ratings, risk profiles, and the like. Relevant terms that may beextracted using natural language processing may include products,shipment dates, fees, payment terms, consignees, logistics partners, andthe like that may or may not be known from public transaction records.These additional terms derived from private or semi-private shipperrecords may facilitate rating suppliers who do not have publictransaction records (e.g. domestic only suppliers), suppliers who use athird party for all shipments recorded in public records, and the like.The trending analysis of the terms found using natural languageprocessing may enable adjusting a rating profile of a supplier. In anexample, if a supplier's payment to a private shipper is trending out(longer time for the shipper to receive payment), the supplier'sfinancial risk rating may be increased. In another example, if asupplier's public records of shipments into the U.S.A. indicate asubstantial increase in shipments followed by a substantial reduction inshipments (likely indicating a slowdown in business), yet that samesupplier's private shipper records show domestic U.S.A. shipments areremaining constant, then one may conclude the supplier has built up adomestic inventory to satisfy domestic customers.

Consignee data from private, semi private (e.g. shipper), or public(e.g. customs) data sources may be used to develop a heat map of markets(e.g. for specific countries or regions). Such a heat map analysis andvisualization may show the markets for a given supplier—may show thecountries, regions, states, even neighborhoods that represent themarkets for a supplier. Such a heat map may be used to determine whichmarkets are served most frequently by a supplier. By determininginformation about suppliers, such as markets most frequently served, itmay be possible to enhance a supplier profile to incorporate informationrelated to those markets. In an example, if a heat map for supplier Ikeaindicates that a supplier most frequently serves a market which may beexperiencing substantial political or economic change, a profile of thatsupplier may be adjusted accordingly.

Normalization may also be useful in understanding a supplier's marketsand better tune a market heat map. One aspect of normalization may be touse global market data to help normalize a supplier data. In an example,if a supplier ships one-half (50%) of its shipments to Zimbabwe andindustry data indicates that this is, in comparison, relatively muchgreater than other suppliers, one can estimate a market analysis for theproducts being supplied by the supplier to Zimbabwe.

Private shipper and private consignee data may be useful forcharacterizing a supplier. These may include using consignee data anddate of shipment data to develop a sense of which countries or regionsare becoming a more prominent part of a supplier's customer base.Similarly using the number of shipments and other measures of shipmentrates may be useful in characterizing a supplier as one of growing,shrinking or remaining stable. By triangulating with other data (e.g.credit data), it may be further possible to identify characteristics ofa supplier. If credit data indicates that the supplier is taking longerto pay, then there may be a financial risk to buyers who prepay or makeadvance payments for custom orders. Machine learning is anothertechnique that may be applied to shipment data that may help determinewhich components of the various data sources that provide data for asupplier are the most representative of leading indicators for thesupplier (e.g. an indication of (or lack of) company stability).

Consignee data may also be useful for trending analysis to determinewhich countries may be increasing export activity. Further analysis mayhelp indicate which products and/or markets within the region may begrowing faster than others (and which supplier may be benefiting mostfrom the growth) by comparing trends for various product categoriesbeing exported out of a region.

Supplier-to-consignee data may be useful in identifying keycountry-to-country relationships and groupings. By analyzing thesesimple data sources, one can determine if a particular combination ofcountries (e.g. China and Ireland) may be growing or shrinking and why.By determining that product shipments of denim clothing from China toSouthern Ireland is increasing, one may be able to envision a change indenim marketplace occurring in Ireland.

Historical data and data over time may be useful in creating a model ofcapacity, such as capacity over time or for a particular time frame(e.g. seasonal capacity, holiday capacity, etc).

By connecting shipments over time into a supply chain (wood from chinais shipped to a factory and the factory ships furniture to a wholesalerin the U.S. who ships to retailers in Canada), it may be possible tohave a deep analysis of a supplier sources of raw materials that mayhelp in ranking and risk assessment of the suppliers. This type ofconnection of supplier with suppliers with retailers with buyers mayenable providing a directed graph of connections between all buyers andall suppliers. Such directed graph data may be useful in performingvarious analyses using any of a variety of graph analysis tools andalgorithms. Analysis may include determining how connectivity changesover time in a region; how deep a supply chain tends to be; how deep arisk may propagate through a supply chain from a buyer; and the like.

Supplier risk assessment may be enhanced with a metric that is relatedto a company's trajectory of imports, exports, payable, and the like aswell as the risks faced by the supplier's suppliers. Data regardingpayables may be useful in such an analysis and risk assessment.Machine-based learning may also be useful in this analysis.

Data related to shipments may include shipment weight. By comparingrecent shipment weight data from a supplier for certain shipments totypical shipment weights from that supplier may be a leading indicatorthat the supplier is shipping sample lots or prototypes, which mayindicate that the supplier is active in product development.

By looking at value of goods based on insurance or declared value, onemay develop inferences about cost and pricing information for particularproducts mapping products (e.g. description) and quantity onto anontology with the declared value for insurance purposes, may facilitategenerating a model which takes that into account with other companies'similar statistics. The model may be established for how much a companysells a product for. Such a model could be done at the country, company,region level. This data, which is provided by suppliers to protect thevalue of a shipment, may be used to determine what buyers are paying forproducts. If the insurance value data for recurring shipments appears tobe going up, then one could determine that a buyer (e.g. retailer GAP)is likely being charged more for products by suppliers so earnings aregoing to be lower than expected this quarter. Although this example isfor a particular buyer, it could easily be applied at a macro level toproduct categories, regions, and the like.

Private and public shipment related data may be useful in identifyingtrends in trade flows. Trends may be determined for a given product.Product focused trends may include which countries are trending positiveas exporters; which are trending negative as exporters; which countriesare trending positive as importers; which are trending negative asimporters; which trade routes (a buyer country/supplier country pair)are trending positive, and which are trending negative; whichdestination ports are hot, which departure ports are hot, and which porttrade lanes (a departure port/destination port pair) are hot; and othertrends may be gleaned from shipment data.

Other data sources include satellite data of shipping routes to helpdetermine which routes ships are actually traversing. By mapping thetrade route data, one may determine various trends and may visualizeinformation about a product or shipment (e.g. visualize timing ofarrival) and the like. Information such as lateness of shipment may be atop level metric that may be further analyzed to determine a source ofshipment lateness. A shipment may be late due to lateness of transfer tothe shipper (indicating a supplier issue) or may be due to lateness ofdelivery (indicating a shipper issue). Such data may also help inanalyzing sphere-to-sphere trade flows to help identify differences invarious zones of the world. This may be useful in optimizing which portsa supplier or buyer should be targeting based on capacity, cost,proximity, and the like.

The data extracted from shipping records may provide details such aspreferences for particular shippers, certain pricing patterns, certaintiming of shipments etc. Natural language processing of shippers datamay be used to determine the products a buyer generally receives and thefrequency of such deliveries. That information may be represented as agraph which may be analyzed to identify the general trends ofrequirements of a buyer. Such analysis may help with identifying areasof growth and new business opportunities. Existing and new buyerprofiles may be enhanced by using the information gathered with naturallanguage processing from a set of shipping records (e.g. private shipperrecords) and the trend information derived there from (e.g. analyzingthe tag clouds). In addition to any public data records (e.g. customstransaction records) that may exist on a buyer, the private shipperrecords may facilitate capturing domestic shipping transactions,transactions that appear in public records as occurring betweenthird-parties, and the like and associate them with a buyer therebyimproving buyer profiles, ratings, risk profiles, and the like. Relevantterms that may be extracted using natural language processing mayinclude products, shipment dates, fees, payment terms, consignees,logistics partners, and the like that may or may not be known frompublic transaction records. These additional terms derived from privateor semi-private shipper records may facilitate rating buyers who do nothave public transaction records (e.g. domestic only buyers), buyers whouse a third party for all shipments recorded in public records, and thelike. The trending analysis of the terms found using natural languageprocessing may enable adjusting a rating profile of a buyer. In anexample, if a buyer's payment to a private shipper is trending out(longer time for the shipper to receive payment), the buyer's financialrisk rating may be increased.

Consignee data may be used to develop a heat map of markets (e.g. forspecific countries or regions). Such a heat map analysis andvisualization may show new markets for a buyer to buy, show thecountries, regions, states, even neighborhoods which may provideproducts at shorter time period and required quantities may be ordered.Such a heat map may be used to determine which markets are accessed mostfrequently by a buyer. By determining information about buyers, such asmarkets most frequently accessed, it may be possible to enhance a buyerprofile to incorporate information related to those markets. In anexample, if a heat map for buyer Panjiva indicates that Panjiva mostfrequently accesses a market which may be experiencing substantialpolitical or economic change, a profile of that buyer may be adjustedaccordingly.

Normalization may also be useful in understanding the buying landscapeto help buyers relate market analysis to a buyer's business plans. In anexample, if a buyer from Germany receives one-half (50%) of its“electronic components” shipments from suppliers in India and industrydata indicates that this is, in comparison, relatively much greater thanother German buyers, the India sourced German market for “electroniccomponents may be estimated based on buyer data.

Consignee data may also be useful for trending analysis to determinewhich countries may be increasing import activity. Further analysis mayhelp indicate which products and/or markets within the region may begrowing faster than others and which buyer(s) may be leading the growth)by comparing trends for various product categories being imported into aregion.

Shipper and consignee data may be also useful for characterizing abuyer. Buyer characterization may include using consignee data and dateof shipment data to develop a sense of which countries or regions arebecoming a more prominent part of a buyer's supply base. Similarly usingthe number of shipments and other measures of shipment rates may beuseful in characterizing a buyer as one of growing, shrinking orremaining stable. By triangulating with other data (e.g. private shippercredit data), it may be further possible to identify characteristics ofa buyer. If credit data indicates that the buyer is taking longer topay, then there may be a financial risk to suppliers who extend creditto a buyer. Machine learning is another technique that may be applied toshipment data that may help determine which components of the variousdata sources that provide data for a buyer are the most representativeof leading indicators for the buyer stability (or lack thereof).

Historical data and data over time may be useful in creating a model ofbuyer demand, such as demand over time or for a particular time frame(e.g. seasonal demand, holiday buyer demand, etc).

By connecting shipments over time into a supply chain (electroniccomponent from India is shipped to a factory in Germany and the factoryships consumer electronic items to a wholesaler in the U.S.), it may bepossible to have a deep analysis of sources of raw materials that mayhelp in ranking and risk assessment of the intermediate buyers in thesupply chain. This type of connection of buyers who become suppliers toretailers may enable providing a directed graph of connections betweenall buyers, all suppliers and any involved third party. Such directedgraph data may be useful in performing various analyses using any of avariety of graph analysis tools and algorithms. Analysis may includedetermining how a buyer's connectivity in various supply chains changesover time in a region; how deep a supply chain tends to extend from aparticular buyer in the supply chain back to raw materials; how deep abuyer's risk may propagate through a supply chain; and the like.

Buyer risk assessment may be enhanced with a metric that is related to acompany's trajectory of imports, local receipts, and the like as well asthe risks faced by the buyer's buyers (e.g. retailers). Data regardingpayables may be useful in such an analysis and risk assessment.

In addition to using publically available information, such as customsdata, names and corporate structures, directory services, publiclytraded company data, the third-party private or semi-private informationsuch as shipper information may also be utilized to facilitateidentification and analyses of relationships between companies as theymay exist in public records. This shipper information may show that twoseparate suppliers recorded in the public records may share an accountwith a shipper, use the same billing address, and the like.

With the enhancements potentially available using private orsemi-private data, a relationship matrix of suppliers and buyers may beprovided. As an example, and not a limitation, a relationship matrix mayinclude a graphical representation of relationship proximity, with therelative distance between suppliers in the graphical representationcorresponding to the degree of closeness of corporate relationship. Asan example of relationship validation, two suppliers that appearseparately in public data that share a common shipper account are highlylikely to be closely related businesses. In this matrix view, icons orother representations of suppliers and/or buyers with relationships thatmay have been validated or appear to be more likely to be close based onprivate data may appear differently than the icons of suppliers and/orbuyers whose relationships have not been enhanced by private data.

In an embodiment, the shipper data may be used to identify if twosuppliers share a single user account and supply the same product to asingle buyer. This may in turn reflect that the suppliers may have twodifferent branches of a single company. Shipper data may also be used toidentify any trends of transactions between various subsidiaries of abuyer and supplier, and forecast deliveries.

In another embodiment, the shipper's data may be analyzed to depict anyname, similarities, and trading relationships to identify companieslikely to have a corporate relationship.

Private data from shippers and logistics providers, for example, mayinclude general forecasts of business based on shipping patterns thatmay include seasonal forecasts, regional forecasts, infrastructurechanges (adding/removing infrastructure such as intermediate shipmentpoints/offices), information about the carriers that shippers and/orlogistics providers use to move freight, head count changes or plans,credit a shipper or logistics provider may extend to a supplier orimporter, collections on owed amounts, delivery pick-up pushback data(may be an indication of companies being bad a meeting deadlines), andthe like. Private and semi-private data may also be useful in profilingshippers, carriers, logistics providers, and the like.

The shipper's data may also be utilized to note the efficiency of asupplier. For example, the extent to which delivery pick-ups are pushedback may be noticed which indicates that the supplier has not been ableto meet deadlines in the past. Further, shipper data may also providedetails regarding the duration of a delay at the supplier's end.

The shipper's data may also be used to note and analyze the logisticsinsurance on any given shipment which may in turn be utilized toapproximate the value of the whole shipment. This data may also beutilized to forecast the value of shipments and also the revenuegenerated by the supplier.

The shipper's data may also be utilized to develop a profile of shippersthemselves and to evaluate the price, risk, and reliability of ashipper.

Planned increases in shipper head count or infrastructure expansion incertain regions may be leading indicators that business transactions inthe region are likely to grow in the general timeframe associated withthe planned expansions. This may be important for other businessesconsidering opening or expanding operations or sales activity in theregion because it may lend creditability to the expected improvement ofbusiness activity that requires shipping services. Likewise, seasonalswings in shipper head count may be used to identify opportunities forcustomers of the shipper to receive additional services made possible bythe increased head count. Services like local inventory management,return services, and the like may be made available at lower costs withimproved regional service.

Shippers and logistics providers may also subcontract work out tofreight carriers, customs service providers, courier services, and thelike. Private and semi-private data, such as shipper data, may be usedto facilitate rating these supply chain participants as well. A poorlyrated freight carrier subcontractor may indicate that a risk of delayedshipments or problems with shipments that rely on that subcontractor maybe greater than with others. This may impact a supplier risk if thesupplier's shipments are generally handled by the poorly ratedsubcontractor. Such information may be useful to buyers, and to thesupplier(s). It may be informative to a supplier who is consideringopening or expanding operations in a region that is served by thesubcontracting carrier.

The elements depicted in flow charts and block diagrams throughout thefigures imply logical boundaries between the elements. However,according to software or hardware engineering practices, the depictedelements and the functions thereof may be implemented as parts of amonolithic software structure, as standalone software modules, or asmodules that employ external routines, code, services, and so forth, orany combination of these, and all such implementations are within thescope of the present disclosure. Thus, while the foregoing drawings anddescription set forth functional aspects of the disclosed systems, noparticular arrangement of software for implementing these functionalaspects should be inferred from these descriptions unless explicitlystated or otherwise clear from the context.

Similarly, it will be appreciated that the various steps identified anddescribed above may be varied, and that the order of steps may beadapted to particular applications of the techniques disclosed herein.All such variations and modifications are intended to fall within thescope of this disclosure. As such, the depiction and/or description ofan order for various steps should not be understood to require aparticular order of execution for those steps, unless required by aparticular application, or explicitly stated or otherwise clear from thecontext.

The methods or processes described above, and steps thereof, may berealized in hardware, software, or any combination of these suitable fora particular application. The hardware may include a general-purposecomputer and/or dedicated computing device. The processes may berealized in one or more microprocessors, microcontrollers, embeddedmicrocontrollers, programmable digital signal processors or otherprogrammable device, along with internal and/or external memory. Theprocesses may also, or instead, be embodied in an application specificintegrated circuit, a programmable gate array, programmable array logic,or any other device or combination of devices that may be configured toprocess electronic signals. It will further be appreciated that one ormore of the processes may be realized as computer executable codecreated using a structured programming language such as C, an objectoriented programming language such as C++, or any other high-level orlow-level programming language (including assembly languages, hardwaredescription languages, and database programming languages andtechnologies) that may be stored, compiled or interpreted to run on oneof the above devices, as well as heterogeneous combinations ofprocessors, processor architectures, or combinations of differenthardware and software.

Thus, in one aspect, each method described above and combinationsthereof may be embodied in computer executable code that, when executingon one or more computing devices, performs the steps thereof. In anotheraspect, the methods may be embodied in systems that perform the stepsthereof, and may be distributed across devices in a number of ways, orall of the functionality may be integrated into a dedicated, standalonedevice or other hardware. In another aspect, means for performing thesteps associated with the processes described above may include any ofthe hardware and/or software described above. All such permutations andcombinations are intended to fall within the scope of the presentdisclosure.

While the invention has been disclosed in connection with the preferredembodiments shown and described in detail, various modifications andimprovements thereon will become readily apparent to those skilled inthe art. Accordingly, the spirit and scope of the present invention isnot to be limited by the foregoing examples, but is to be understood inthe broadest sense allowable by law. All documents referenced herein arehereby incorporated by reference.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method for rankingsupplier or buyer search results comprising: storing, in a memory,structured data associated with a plurality of entities, the pluralityof entities comprising a plurality of suppliers and a plurality ofbuyers; determining, with a processor, for each of the plurality ofentities, a self-disclosure integrity rating based on the structureddata; comparing, with the processor, the structured data to searchkeywords received through a user interface hosted by a server;generating, with the processor, a candidate search result set ofentities based on the comparison, wherein the candidate search resultset of entities comprises a filtered number of entities from theplurality of entities; weighting, with the processor, a combination of aplurality of entity performance measures for each of the filtered numberof entities, wherein the plurality of entity performance measurescomprises at least the self-disclosure integrity rating; ranking, withthe processor, the filtered number of entities based on the weightedcombination of the plurality of entity performance measures; selecting,with the processor, at least one selected entity based on the rankednumber of entities; calculating, with the processor, a self-disclosureintegrity reward for the at least one selected entity; and granting,with the processor, the at least one selected entity access to amarketplace computing system.
 2. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, wherein the self-disclosure integrity rating is associated witha reliability of information provided by the plurality of entities. 3.The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the informationprovided by the plurality of entities comprises at least one of shippingtimes, shipping location, delivery location, business size, timelypayments for shipments, rate of returns, quantity of shipments, andtypes of products shipped.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim1, wherein the plurality of entity performance measures for each of thefiltered number of entities further comprises at least one measureselected from the list consisting of: number of shipments made by thesupplier that matches at least one aspect of a buyer's request, numberof similar products the supplier makes that match the buyer's request,export value per category of product exported by the supplier, andnumber of certifications or clearances that a particular supplier has.5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprisingarranging the search results based on the rankings.
 6. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising displayingthe search results on the user interface.
 7. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 6, further comprising displaying the self-disclosureintegrity rating for each of the filtered number of entities in thesearch result.
 8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, furthercomprising determining, with the processor, a weighting for at least onestructured data element that correlates to at least one of the searchkeywords by applying a term frequency-inverse document frequency(TF-IDF) algorithm to at least a portion of a plurality of free textfields included in the structured data, and wherein the generating thecandidate search result set is further based on the determined weightingfor the at least one structured data element.
 9. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein producing the ranking ofthe filtered number of entities is further based on a result of applyingthe TF-IDF algorithm to the structured data.
 10. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein weighting thecombination includes logarithmically weighting.
 11. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting,by the marketplace computing system, a business query directly to the atleast one selected entity.
 12. The computer-implemented method of claim1, wherein the self-disclosure integrity reward is calculated based on aself-disclosure integrity reward formula.
 13. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 12, wherein the self-disclosure integrity reward formulais based on an accuracy of information disclosed by the at least oneselected entity related to one or more of a payment policy on ordercancellation, a payment of interest upon delay in paying for an order,and terms and conditions related to payment of the at least one selectedentity.